A mailbox announcement by the German voice of Julia Roberts or Bruce Willis makes an enormous impression, but it also costs a lot of money. But it doesn’t have to be that exclusive. There are a lot of offers online where you can book speakers for a little less and have a professional announcement produced. But how does the professional announcement end up on your own smartphone?
That’s where the problems start. Because technically there is no function to upload an audio file to the mailbox of your own smartphone. Then the only option left is to speak your own announcement text as professionally as possible via the mailbox menu. Let’s be honest: Very few people can do that convincingly without speaker training.
Create mailbox announcement yourself or via production studio?
Some might also want to add lively music to the mailbox announcement. At least now it gets complicated. To do this, users would have to mix their voice recording with the music using audio software. This results in further hurdles.
What music can be used? Copyrights exist for almost all pieces of music. Of course there are portals with free, GEMA-free music. However, very clear rules of use also apply to this. If you violate these, the self-produced announcement text can become an expensive affair.
There is also a technically simple solution for a mailbox announcement with music: You play the finished audio clip over the speakers of your stereo system. To do this, first click on the “Record your own outgoing message” function in the mailbox menu on your smartphone. Then take your smartphone and start recording. Simultaneously play the audio clip and hold your smartphone to the speakers.
With a little skill, you can achieve a halfway successful recording with acceptable sound quality. However, since most smartphones do not have outstanding microphones, you sometimes have to accept considerable losses in quality. You will probably do this more easily if you have recorded the announcement text for private purposes and in your own production.
However, you certainly do not want that if you have commissioned the announcement text from a professional agency for a fee. Of course, all agencies offer to play the audio file directly from the recording studio and without loss of quality to the mailbox of your smartphone for a small surcharge. In this case, you should actually make use of this service, especially if you use the professional announcement for business purposes.
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Business solutions or configurator as a compromise
There’s still a trade-off between being absolutely amateur and professional. Some mobile phone providers or production studios offer such a professional announcement service for business customers.
Usually you have the option to choose between a female or male voice. For a small surcharge, for example Telekom to its business customers such an announcement service. However, you only have a few opportunities to add a personal touch because the texts are already pre-produced.
The online service voxendo.com, for example, offers an announcement text configurator. There, customers can choose the right voice from a variety of voices. The text is then spoken according to your own specifications and, if desired, accompanied by music. The price must be negotiated individually with the provider. voxendo.com also offers ready-made announcement texts at a low price.
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Contact the mobile operator directly
By the way: If you want to save the extra charge for uploading the audio file to your mailbox, a search engine query will help. As a rule, the mobile phone provider will take care of this on request. However, the major shareholders do not advertise directly on their own website.
at Vodafone for example, you can request this service via the forum. A friendly forum moderator will then usually respond and ask you to send the audio file via private message. To do this, you must be registered as a member of the Vodafone forum. Then the technical support takes care of the uploading without quality loss.
So that you can later check how callers hear your professional announcement, you must Telekom a certain combination of numbers dial in connection with your own cell phone number. With Vodafone, simply dial 017X 50+your mobile number.