Setting Up Your Voicemail and Greeting is Easy—Here’s How

Setting up and customizing your voicemail is one of the most straightforward yet essential steps for fully enjoying the convenience of your cellphone. It makes sure that you never miss an important message—and that anyone calling will know for sure that they’ve reached the right person.

Voicemail is a free feature with your Consumer Cellular service and can be set up simply by holding down the “1” key on your phone and following the prompts. You can even follow our step-by-step “How To” video on how to set up voicemail to make sure you’ve done it correctly.

Once your voicemail is up and running, you’ll want to record a personalized greeting. The steps for this will be slightly different depending on the operating system of your phone (Android or iOS).

Here’s an overview of how to record a voicemail greeting for either type of phone.

Recording a voicemail greeting on Android phones:

• On Android devices, open the Phone app.
• Then, press and hold “1” to call your voicemail.
• Now, enter your PIN and press “#”.
• Press “*” for the menu.
• Press “4” to change settings.
• Press “1” to change your greeting.
• Make sure to follow all the instructions.

Recording a voicemail greeting on iPhone (iOS):

• Open the Phone app — the app that you use to make phone calls and track your contacts — and tap “Voicemail” in the bottom-right corner.
• Tap “Greeting” in the top-left corner. Your iPhone will take a few moments to fetch and load your current voicemail greeting, which you can play using the controls in the middle of the page. 
• If you don’t have a voicemail already set up, “Default” will be checked. To set up your greeting, check “Custom.”
• When you’re ready to begin recording, tap on “Record” and begin speaking. Once you begin recording, you’ll see the line turn red. This indicates how much time you have left.
• When you’re done recording, hit “Stop.”
• To listen to your recording, tap “Play” on the left-hand side of the screen.
• Once you’re happy with your recording, tap “Save” in the top-right corner.

Need inspiration for your message? Here’s a basic greeting that’ll work in most situations:

• “Hi, you’ve reached [your name]. I can’t come to the phone right now. Please leave a message, and I’ll get back to you as soon as possible.”

If you’re not always near your phone or keep it on silent most of the time, you might also want to tell callers a better way to reach you.

As a final check, once you’ve set everything up and recorded a message that you’re happy with, make a test call. Call your number from someone else’s phone, and you can hear how your message sounds. If you don’t like it, now that you already know how to make your own voicemail, simply start over again. And if you do—congratulations! Callers will now know they’ve reached you, and you can be sure of getting your most important messages.