This medical testimonial for our "Patients On Hold" music and messaging service just came in just after one of our valued medical office clients received our newsletter...and was just too good to keep to myself.  Yes, we do occasionally ask for testimonials, but this came in with out us asking. 

We’re fortunate to work with quite a few medical practices, and some of the things we’ve learned in writing their scripts we’re able to pass along to the rest of our clients and friends. As America gears up for the coming flu season, and especially the H1N1 or “swine” flu, the advice from our medical practices is practically unanimous. Whether you get a flu shot or not, and whether you get the Swine Flu vaccine or not, remember to always wash your hands after going to the bathroom, before eating, or after touching anything that just doesn’t feel clean. Cover your mouth when you cough, sneeze into the inside of your elbow. Maintain a healthy diet, get regular exercise and drink plenty of water. If you feel bad, stay home. If your kids feel bad, keep them home. Preventing the flu is the best thing you can, preventing it’s spread if you get it is the next best thing.

An ongoing project in 2009 has been the redesign of our web site, which debuted in it’s new form at the beginning of September. If you have visited us lately, please spend a few minutes at www.onholdmarketing.com . We think you’ll find it easier to navigate, and to find the things you’re looking for, especially audio demos, and how to contact us. There’s also a new section on playback equipment, including some close-up pictures that can help new customers understand our players and help existing customers troubleshoot their players.

TELEPHONE TIPS / ETIQUETTE 

Have you ever noticed how much attention (and money) a business spends on its lobby or greeting area?  There may be a nice warm reception area complete with artwork, a candy dish and perhaps even a TV screen.   It’s usually well furnished and very clean.  Typically there will be somebody there to welcome you.  The lobby and entrance area is truly very important in that it is an entry portal or ‘touch point’ for clients and partners.   But certainly, there are other ‘touch points’ to a company.  These ‘touch points’ may include outside sales representatives, websites or mailing campaigns.   But of course, the possibility still remains that your telecommunications system is a major ‘point of entry’ or ‘touch point’ to your company.  

Your telephone system:

Years ago, the terminology for what was once known as the common ‘call center’ became known as the ‘contact center’.   That’s because the number of ‘touch points’ increased from a simple voice call, to a potential fax, email or other electronic file.   Certainly there are folks that enjoy communicating via electronic means, but the good ole telephone call continues to rank high as the most effective means of building relationship, rapport and trust between consumers and providers. 

Consider the below tips:

1) Your main phone number is the front door to your business:  Put yourself in the shoes of your callers.  Call your own company and role play yourself as a new potential client.  Try to grasp the ‘caller experience’ and be able to qualify your initial first impression.  

• Was the main phone number answered by a warm human or a cumbersome automated attendant?  Or perhaps, it was answered by a very well designed automated attendant.  The most effective automated attendants offer only 3-5 menu choices initially, with the most commonly desired destination being listed first.  

• Brevity and voice audio quality are critical.  Whether you are using a human or automated attendant to answer the calls, avoid lengthy greetings that include time consuming tag lines or long courtesy statements.  Be sure your automated attendant greeting is professional and of high audio quality.  If a human is answering the telephone, does the greeting sound rushed?  Is the greeting succinct and understandable?  Can the caller clearly hear the name of the company?  

2) Call Screening techniques:  This sure can be a touchy subject and be a matter of stylistic preference.  But once again, we would encourage you to put yourself in the shoes of the caller.   For purposes of this conversation, we’ll define ‘screening the call’ as asking the caller to share their name (either with the human or automation) in an effort to alert the called party.

• Consider NOT screening the call.  While the called party would appreciate the knowledge of who is calling, and preparing properly for the call, consider that Caller ID can do some of that work for you.  There is absolutely a downside of ‘screening’ that should be considered.   If an important caller has been ‘screened’, but the called party can’t or won’t take the call, the caller can only be left with the impression that their call wasn’t deemed as important.  This is a very hard habit to break if ‘screening’ has been in place for years.  Consider a weeklong trial and determine if it works in your scenario.  Your callers will appreciate it.  Sure, an undesired call or two will ‘sneak through’, but that is a minor consequence to the potential that a viable and perhaps sensitive client may feel snubbed.

• If your phone system does not allow for an easy way to alert ‘off-hook’ employees of ‘holding calls’, consider using your internal IM service as a way to make your associates aware that callers are holding. If Caller ID / NAME is displayed….make your associates aware of the possible caller.  

• Changing your voice mail greeting everyday to reflect your ‘status’ for the day is optimum, but only if you can commit to keeping it updated and timely and somewhat brief.

• Brevity is king.  Be sure to speak clearly and don’t rush through your name or company name.   The practice of saying “I’m sorry I’ve missed your call, and your call is important to me” is obsolete.  A very simple “Hello, this is Jeff Burton with Burton Construction.  Please leave a message and I look forward to returning your call shortly” is a better choice as opposed to “Hello.  It’s a great day at Burton Construction.  You’ve reached the voice mailbox of Jeff Burton.  I’m unavailable to the phone right now but at the tone, please leave your name, your telephone number and the reason you called and I will return you call at my first opportunity.  If your call is urgent, you can press zero and your call will be transferred to the operator.  Thanks for calling, and here’s the tone!”  Though the latter greeting may suggest a more courteous and even informative approach, the vernacular has become ‘noise’ to callers through the years.  Most everything in the latter greeting can be assumed.

• Record your voice mail greeting via the handset, not the speakerphone.  To the extent possible, always use your primary desk phone whether it be digital or IP to record any of your voice mail greetings.  Desk phones almost always offer far superior audio quality to cell phones.  

• After you have recorded your greeting, be sure to quickly press whatever button (# or *) your system requests to ‘end’ the greeting.  This will help quickly produce the ‘beep’ tone callers are waiting to hear so they can leave their message.  

• To the extent possible, always allow (via programming) an ‘operator revert’ in the form of a zero to operator for the caller, whether you actually state it in your greeting or not.  It is often assumed.  This is particularly important if the caller has reached your voice mailbox with a direct (DID) number to your desk!  Without the operator revert, you have offered your customer a bench in your voice mail ‘jail’, with nowhere to go (except possibly a competitor).  

• Know your phone system.  Spend 15-20 minutes with your user guide to completely understand the plethora of features available.  Many of these features will help you help callers.  

• Know your cell phone voice mail options.  Many personal greetings are often followed by the canned service greetings that offer the caller to ‘send a page, press 5.  To send a fax press 6’.  There are typically options in your service to turn off prompt requests that aren’t appropriate to your situation.   Chances are high that today’s users are not carrying pagers or using the fax option mentioned above.

4) Caller ID Name and Number:  This section is intended for the telecommunications management team of a company.  What NAME do people see in their CALLER ID DISPLAY when you or somebody in your company calls them?  Is it the current and proper name of your company?  Are you sure that it is consistently showing the same NAME no matter what outgoing line you use to make outgoing calls?  The reality is that many businesses are completely unaware of how they are ‘showing up’ to the parties they are calling.  It is quite possible that you are presenting several different names to those you call.   Over the years, as your company places orders for new service with various phone companies, a wide mix of NAMES can occur.  Some businesses are still being identified with the name of a business they acquired several years ago, or perhaps even the name of a former employee or owner that placed original orders.  To make it more complex, though you make think you have this solved, another reality is that your NAME will possibly display differently, contingent upon the phone line carrier of the person you have called.  For example, though you may think your NAME shows as ABC COMPANY to everybody, it may show up as ABC COMPANY when you call a Verizon customer, but it may show up as something completely different if you call a Comcast or Paetec customer.  Try it and see!  Make several outgoing calls from your office to your cell, your house, and other businesses and ask them what they see.  Find out who their carrier is also.  There are services that companies offer to ‘fix’ all of the above issues.  A phone call to your carrier will not in itself fix all of the variables.  You are welcome to contact us for more information!

5) On Hold Treatment of your callers:   As mentioned at the outset of this document, most businesses pay a great deal of attention and money to ‘dressing’ up the lobby or main entrance to their facility.  After all, people do ‘wait’ in the lobby and we certainly would not have them wait in a silent area, void of décor and visual stimulus.  In fact, most lobby areas are decorated with company awards, plaques, framed articles and other items to occupy the waiting client.  Consider doing the same for callers that are ‘waiting’ On Hold.   Since the caller is in essence a ‘captured audience’, it is important to make sure they know they are still connected, as silence makes folks hang up quickly.  This is also a prime opportunity to eloquently and professionally educate the caller on your services.   Proper script-writing and production will provide information that is valuable to the caller with appropriate and properly licensed music in between the messages to enhance the professional image.   The key to creating an effective messaging program is to educate the callers on products and services offered, of which the callers may not be aware.  

Do you want to keep your On Hold message fresh but don’t find that you have the time to address it every month or every quarter? We’ve had quite a bit of success in the past few years helping our clients work in advance. Several of our quarterly program clients have found that mapping out a schedule of topics for a year at a time makes the script updating process much easier, and much less time consuming. 

There are several ways you can go about this: 

One way is to review your promotional and sales activities for the past 12-15 months. Determine which of those activities are likely to take place again in the same time period, and allot the appropriate number of messages in each of your On Hold messages to address those activities. If any of your sales or promotional activities are seasonal in nature, this is pretty easy…just map out what’s going to happen in the winter, in the spring, in the summer and in the fall. Even if you don’t have the full details, just knowing the topics is half the battle. Once you know the topics, we can write the messages for you. 

If your company compiles an annual marketing or strategic plan, you can use that as your guideline. Just plot out the activities or sales topics that need to be covered during specific times of the year. These may or may not be seasonal, but again simply putting the topics on paper will greatly save you time and effort during the course of the year. 

Some of our clients update their on hold messages quarterly, even though their business does not really change from season to season to season. Instead, these folks find that they simply have just too much to talk about in one single 6:00 program. What we’ve done for them is divided their product or service lines in five groups: one group runs all year long, while the other four groups each rotate in and out on a quarterly basis. The result is that four times as many products and services are promoted On Hold during the course of the year, four times as many products and services get sold during the year, and the already-overworked marketing directors only had to address this task once. 

Here’s the last point for today: 

A typical update might take up about an hour of your time total: from the time you decide an update is needed to the phone call to talk with us about it to the time it takes you to send us the information to the time it takes you to review the new script and give us changes to the time it takes you to finally approve it. Do that four times in 2009 and you’ve used up four hours, maybe more. Take a little more time, say 90 minutes or two hours, to get the whole year done in advance, and you’ve saved yourself two hours that you might be able to use generating new revenue. 

As I said at the top, we’ve had good success, and good response, doing this for a number of clients in the past few years. We know how to do it, and how to make it easy for you. Want to know more? Just give us a call!

In a strong economy, On Hold Advertising is one of many tools you can use to grow your business. In a weak economy, On Hold Advertising is one of the most essential tools to keep your market share from eroding. The definition of a weak economy, in simple terms, is decreased spending all the way around. That probably includes you, and your customers. The key to surviving a recession is to keep your customers, and to the extent possible, keep them at current spending levels. If your business has reduced spending, say with reduced staff, you’re going to have more callers (including customers and potential customers) go on hold. Your On Hold Advertising is the most effective way…the most precisely targeted and focus delivery method…of talking to those people every day.

Think about it…aside from your employees…who are the people that matter most to the success of your business? The people who buy from you. And your On Hold Advertising talks to them every single day. Sure your print ads, newsletters, brochures and web site all reach them. But those media also reach a lot of other eyes that are NOT buying from you. Much of your printed material winds up in the recycling bin. But messages heard by your callers while On Hold hit the exact target you’re aiming for every time.

So make sure your On Hold Advertising is current and up to date. Make sure whatever you’re doing to help your customers with their business in 2009 is included in your On Hold Advertising. If you’re not sure if your On Hold Advertising is on target, just give us a call. We can help.

I received a script from a client before Christmas that they wrote. Each of the On Hold Messages was over 200 words long. You probably don’t deal in word-counts every day, but we do, so let us give you a tip regarding On Hold Messages. 

First it’s important to understand how your On Hold Messages are heard. For the most part, your program plays continuously in the background, whether a caller is on hold or not (some phone systems do start from the beginning every time a caller is placed on hold, but for this discussion that distinction is not particularly important). So when you place a caller On Hold, he/she is going to hear your program wherever it is playing at that particular time. Could be between messages, could be in the middle of a message. And depending on the length of the hold time, he/she might hear one or two or three complete messages, or they might only hear part of one message. 

Individual On Hold Messages that are 200 words long will easily run over a minute and a half long. Which means there’s over a minute from the beginning of the message to the end of the message. Most businesses we work with try to keep their hold times as short as possible. Which means the average caller would likely never hear one of these On Hold Messages from start to finish. 

When we write On Hold Messages, we aim for 65-85 words, or about 18-25 seconds. Our 20 years of experience has shown that this time frame makes for the most effective messages. It gives your On Hold Messages the best chance of being heard in their entirety… the beginning, middle and end. When your callers ARE placed On Hold, and are hearing your On Hold Messages, you want them to get the complete story on each topic as often as possible. And you want to there to be a “call to action” wherever possible – usually “ask us to tell you more when we come on the line,” or “pick up a bag the next time you’re in the store.” But what you don’t want to have is On Hold Messages running close to two minutes long where your hold times are 30-45 seconds. 

Oh, one more thing…remember we’re happy to do the writing for you. Don’t feel as though you have to do it yourself. It’s part of what we do every day.

On Hold Marketing is only one slice of the total marketing pie if you’re an HVAC/R, HARDI, or ASA distributor.  After all, a large portion of your sales come to you via the telephone…and the typical HVACR/HARDI/ASA distributor location puts around 30 calls a day on hold…so making sure you handle inbound calls properly isn’t something to ignore.  You should have a mini-marketing plan for the message-on-hold slice of your marketing.   Although HVAC/R distributors serve their own unique markets, they do share a common caller profile.  Knowledge of the HVAC/R distribution business and your caller profile allows one to address distributor marketing specifically, but the elements shown here can work no matter which On Hold provider you’re using for on hold message.  Here’s how it all works:  Your advertising tools (eg: sales force, web site, flyers, trade ads) encourage contractors to call. (to order, check on an order, ask for specs, register for an event or promotion) If callers go on hold for a moment or two, then your message on hold program reinforces your other advertising in web sites, print ads & sales team promotion. It’s all about multiplying your marketing. 

Here’s how to really get something back from your on hold message….get your calendar out and make dates to.. 

#1 - Consult managers on a list of hot topics

#2 - Change the message at least quarterly (at least re-visit it!)

#3 - reinforce your marketing messages being used elsewhere

       (e.g.; your web site, flyers, promotions) 

#4 - Inform your inside sales staff of the content of the on hold message 

#5 - help inside sales people prepare to answer questions generated by the on hold message

     (yes, this looks allot like #4, this is actually anticipating questions and preparing answers) 

#6 - create a specific plan for inquires received by inside sales people..

      ...so they transfer the inquiry to the appropriate outside sales people asap.

#7 - Draw in delivery drivers to help with your marketing...they can leave flyers or pens, or pads...some customers only see two of your staff members...their rep...and their delivery driver!  

 Call it whatever you want, message on hold, on hold message, or on hold marketing…it deserves more than passive glance.  If you'd like to brainstorm this with someone with industry experience, call us at 800-342-0098. 

Have you ever called a business and get put on hold only to have your ears nearly explode from the noise you had to experience? Or nearly fall asleep from the “elevator music” typical on many phone systems. Choosing the right On Hold music for your clientele is critical to the image you wish to convey for your business or practice. A bank or financial institution would probably not want their investors listening to heavy metal while waiting for financial advice. On the other hand, a custom motorcycle shop would probably not choose a light and lilting classical piece. We also have to be careful not to select music that features a soaring or dramatic instrumental solo while the voice talent is presenting your message.  This creates conflict to the human ear and brain, and can detract from your image message.

Don’t scare your callers away before you even get a chance to answer their questions. On Hold Marketing is preparing to celebrate its 20th year of choosing the right music for its customers. Our music library has literally thousands of musical choices. Don’t worry! We’re not going to make you listen to thousands of musical selections and then ask you to decide what you want. Our staff includes trained musicians (Berklee College of Music & East Carolina University) and production managers (Clear Channel) to take care of that for you.  If you have a musical preference we can, of course, accommodate your style. We know music and which music best suits your listeners.   

There are several variables to consider that are ‘technical’ in nature.  For example, some newer phone systems support our service in the form of an audio file.  In nearly all cases, this file requires some degree of audio ‘compression’ to make the files smaller for easy transport and loading.  This compression can cause musical instruments such as bells, pianos, flutes and some human voices to sound unnatural or even a bit ‘warbly’.  

Let On Hold Marketing make it easy on you. We’ll make you look like the smart one because your music AND message on hold and will sound great. Customers will comment on your superior marketing strategy in using on hold messaging and music. Listen as questions about your “other services” increase and watch your business continue to grow.