What is voicemail and advantage of using it ?
You can’t answer every call on your mobile or home phone, so your best bet is to set up a Vodafone voicemail box. Voicemail allows callers to leave a voice message when you’re not able to take a call, and most phone services offer it – whether its mobile, landline, and VoIP. The caller hears a greeting (which you can personalise) and leaves an oral message to let you know they called and/or why they called.
Perhaps the core advantage of setting up a voicemail box is to avoid missing important calls without knowing. But voicemail can also help you screen calls – after all, not every call is important, so having access to a voice message explaining the reason for a call can really come in handy when deciding whether or not to call back.
Voicemail isn’t new – it has simply evolved from the days of answering machines which recorded voice messages to your fixed home phone on physical tapes. Today, voicemail boxes are digital, and are available to both home phone and mobile phone users.
In this post, we’ll walk you through the steps to set up a voicemail box on the Vodafone network, so read on to find out how.
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Setting up voicemail on Vodafone Network
Vodafone makes setting up your voicemail box very easy. It’s a simple, straightforward process that involves dialing a number and following the prompts.
Here’s a quick look at how to set up your Vodafone voicemail box:
- Call 121 from your Vodafone handset and follow the prompts
- Set up your 4 to 10 digit security code when asked – this will come in handy for checking your voicemail box from another phone.
- Record your name for the greeting a caller will hear whenever you don’t pick up the phone
- Choose your state to determine your time zone – this will come in handy when you want to know exactly when a voicemail was left.
- Your voicemail has now been set up, but remain on the line to personalise your greeting, which your caller will hear prior to leaving a voicemail.
- After this, you can also change your notification method and choose whether or not you should be prompted to enter your security code before being able to check your voicemail box.
Now that you’ve set up your voicemail box, callers will be able to record a voice message whenever you don’t pick up. But checking that voicemail is requires a few steps as well.
Here’s how to check your Vodafone voicemail box for messages:
- Call 211 from your Vodafone handset. If your Vodafone phone isn’t available, you can also check your voicemail from another phone and network by dialling 0414 121 121 and entering your 4 to 10 digit security code.
- Press ‘*’ and enter your Vodafone phone number beginning with ‘04’
- Then press ‘#’ and enter your security code
- Press ‘#’ again.
After listening to a voicemail, you have a number of options on the Vodafone network. For instance, you can return the call by pressing ‘0’, save the message for 1 week by pressing 2, delete the message by pressing 3, and many more options.
And if you’d like to customise your voicemail settings further, you can do so online through My Vodafone. Under “Call Forwarding”, you’ll find different options for when a caller should be diverted to voicemail. You can choose between all calls being sent to voicemail, only unanswered calls to voicemail, or only calls that come in when your line is busy or unreachable.
Vodafone Network coverage in Australia
Vodafone voicemail is a great feature, but none of this matters if their network isn’t that good.
Thankfully, the Vodafone Network is actually pretty good. The telco has come a long way from customer complaints over spotty network coverage, and is actually quite reliable as part of the third largest telco in the country, TPG Telecom.
Vodafone’s mobile network covers 96 percent of the population, or aorund 23 million people (out of the 25 million Australian population). We believe that’s great coverage, even though it falls behind Telstra (99.5 percent) and Optus (98.5 percent). The key thing to focus on is the particular mobile network in question (3G, 4G, or 5G), and the area you live in.
In fact, around six years ago, Opensignal indicated that Vodafone’s 4G signal was available 88.48 percent of the time, while Telstra’s 4G was available 88.06 percent of the time. Other independent reviews at that time also placed Vodafone ahead of Optus regarding how broad their 4G coverage was. And four years ago, Opensignal concluded that Vodafone’s LTE speeds had surpassed Telstra’s.
Of course, those figures are a few years old now, but they show just how far Vodafone’s network has come. Today, they are rolling out their 5G network, which they recently announced covers 85 percent of the population across 10 cities and areas.
Bottom line
The process of setting up voicemail on a phone is as easy as 1, 2, 3, even for the not so technically minded. The real question is – how much voicemail do you want these days? My advice is to take the opportunity of the ‘out of office’ personalised greeting, and insert a request for your callers to send you an SMS instead of leaving a voice message. Voicemail is an old technology now, borne of those home answering machines we used to have 30 years ago. These days, less intrusive, asynchronous messages are far more preferable.