Real quick. You've got 9 voicemails sitting there. You know two of them matter and seven are somebody trying to sell you SEO. So you don't listen to any of them, and three days later you find out the one that mattered was a customer trying to hand you money.
Listening to voicemail is the worst possible way to get information. It's slow, it's out of order, you can't skim it, and you can't search it. Meanwhile your phone is already writing every one of them down for you and you've been ignoring it.
What you need
- Your phone with voicemail transcription turned on (iPhone has it built in, most Android carriers do too)
- Claude
- 10 minutes to set it up, then about 4 minutes a morning
Setup
- Make sure transcription is on.
- iPhone: Settings, Apps, Phone, Live Voicemail. Flip it on. Now every voicemail shows up as text under the Voicemail tab.
- Android: Phone app, three dots, Settings, Voicemail. Look for "Voicemail transcription" or "Visual Voicemail." Turn it on. If your carrier doesn't offer it, most carriers will email you the transcript instead, check your carrier app.
- Every morning, open your voicemail tab and copy the transcripts. On iPhone, tap a voicemail and hold on the text to copy. Do it for all of them into one note.
- Open Claude, paste the prompt below, then paste your transcripts under it.
- You get back a written list. Who called, what they want, what you have to do, and what's actually urgent.
- Do the urgent ones. Ignore the rest until the afternoon.
If your phone won't transcribe at all, use the second prompt. You listen once on speaker and talk out what you heard, then paste that in. Still faster than replaying voicemails four times.
The prompts
The daily one:
I run a [YOUR BUSINESS TYPE] in [YOUR CITY]. Below are the voicemail
transcripts from my phone. They're auto-transcribed so some words are
going to be wrong, especially names and numbers.
Turn these into a written list for my morning. Give me:
1. DEAL WITH TODAY. Anyone who sounds like money coming in, an angry
customer, or something time-sensitive. For each one give me: who
called, their number, what they want in one line, and what I need
to do.
2. THIS WEEK. Real but not on fire. Same format.
3. IGNORE. Sales calls, robocalls, junk. Just list who and drop it.
Then at the bottom, give me a short draft text I can send back to
everyone in the TODAY group. One per person, under 200 characters,
sounds like a person not a company.
If a name or phone number looks garbled in the transcript, flag it as
UNCLEAR instead of guessing.
Here are the transcripts:
[PASTE THEM HERE]If you have to listen yourself:
I run a [YOUR BUSINESS TYPE]. I just listened to my voicemails and I'm
going to type out roughly what each one said, messy, in whatever order
I remember. Organize it into the same three groups: deal with today,
this week, ignore. Ask me for anything you need that I left out
instead of filling it in yourself.
[TYPE OUT WHAT YOU HEARD]Turn the list into your day:
Take the TODAY list above and put it in the order I should actually do
it in. Consider which ones are most likely to fall apart if I wait,
and which ones take two minutes versus an hour. Tell me which two to
do first and why, in plain language.What to check before you trust it
Auto-transcripts butcher names and phone numbers constantly. "Kowalski" becomes "call ski." Always pull the actual callback number off the phone screen, never off the transcript. This is the number one way this bites people.
Anything about money, dates, or an address, verify it against the voicemail itself before you act on it. The summary is for triage, not for facts you're going to quote back to somebody.
If a voicemail sounds angry or legal or has anything to do with a dispute, listen to the actual recording. Tone doesn't transcribe, and you need to hear it.
Don't paste in anything with a social security number, a card number, or medical details. Not because something bad happens automatically, but because you should be in the habit of not putting that stuff in a text box you don't own.
— Jordan