For those readers who see the value in the question, but don’t yet have an On Hold message program, here’s what On Hold is all about. 

When your customers call and are momentarily put On Hold, you lose control of the customer. Since you’re not tending directly to them, their behavior can take some undesirable turns.  For instance, some will hang-up…and many will hang on for a bit, all the while growing just a little more frustrated in their, albeit incorrect, perception that you’re ignoring them.

A music and professionally voiced message on hold program, if properly created, will occupy the customer until you can take their call.  This reduces the ill effects of silence or radio On Hold.  The fun part is that we can use topics about your business to inform and entertain them, while also making hold time more enjoyable.

What questions should be asked when considering how often to make content changes?

•       What expectations do I have for my On Hold message?                                                                 

      (just noise?, inform?, entertain?, branding?, image building?)

•       How often does my typical customer/client call?

      (do they call several times weekly, or only a couple of times during the year)

•       What external changes during the year have an impact on the needs of my target market? 

•       How often does my internal product or service offering change during the year?
•       How much time am I willing to spend thinking of new topics?                                                      

Raising Expectations – If your expectation is to only have some kind of noise on hold, there is little reason to change the content.  At least callers will know they haven’t been disconnected.  However, an unplanned and out of date message On Hold program can influence your callers to hang up or at least cause them to be in a less-than-friendly mood once their call is taken.   A little planning and use of proven On Hold messages studies can turn a potential hang-up into a loyal and long term customer.  Raising expectations to include current, accurate, and engaging content will bring results in the form of improved branding, awareness of your breadth of product and service offerings, and simply a better caller experience.

Typical Caller- Let’s use a visual analogy of your callers On Hold experience.  Think of any roadside billboard that you pass in your daily travels…and now think of yourself as the owner of that billboard and the drivers as your typical callers On Hold.  If the drivers see your billboard daily, then it makes sense for you to change the billboard content frequently, say monthly or quarterly.  However, if they only see your billboard several times a year, then changing it annually can be just as effective, not to mention more economical in terms of your time and money.

To use a concrete example, think of someone you call a lot. A good example may be a distributor of something you consume or resell in quantity. You’ll likely experience hold time frequently and things that would cause you to become impatient (or even hang up) could be silence On Hold, an On Hold message that repeats often, or On Hold messages that you’ve heard repeatedly over several calling experiences.  Since the typical caller is On Hold more often with a distributor, frequent content changes should be considered.

On the other hand, think of someone you call infrequently. A good example may be your tailor or dry cleaners. Since you call infrequently, this kind of business can change their content once or twice a year without the caller noticing, and the business can still realize their higher expectations for their On Hold messages.

External Influences – The needs of your target market have a significant impact on what you inventory and promote…and these needs can change due to lots of forces.  Even physicians see changes in what tests and treatments are needed due to seasonal sports injuries.  The social event-filled holidays can make dental patients think about tooth whitening.  Businesses of every kind can see their inventory change due to seasonal and weather changes. Consider how your market changes during the year and see these changes as opportunities to make your On Hold message more current, more relevant, prompting callers to ask for more information.

Internal Offering Changes - Consider how your inventory and promotions change during the year due to supply-side changes in availability, model changes…even changes in your staff can have an impact on your offering. New people bring new talents and skills.

Your Time- Using the above mentioned criteria for selecting a content update frequency is legitimate.  However, if one hasn’t the time to think of new topics and approve our written scripts, then planned updates may not be completed.  It may be better to select a less ambitious plan and order content changes as time allows, than to fall short of a structured plan.

It’s your call.

Ok, surely it’s your call, it’s your business and you call the shots. Beyond that, it’s “your call” in the sense that your advertising dollars paid for that inbound call.  I like to say that the “ringing” noise your telephone makes is the sound of your marketing dollars trying to get back into your wallet!

Just as walk-in customers get an impression about you by their experience in your lobby or reception area, they also get an impression of you from how their telephone call is treated.  Keeping a current and engaging On Hold message reduces hang ups and makes hold time seems shorter while enhancing your professional image.  And speaking of professional image, the benefits of fewer hang-ups and improved customer service alone justifies the relatively low cost.  Any direct sales activity can be considered as gravy. 

Ask us to help you evaluate the right update plan.   We'll help you maintain the right image while maximizing the results of your On Hold Marketing.

Months ago we added a “Live Chat” feature to our web pages to give web site visitors a direct connection to us…and the experience has been surprising. Yes, we get inquiries from people searching for a better On Hold Marketing provider, but I believe we get more live-chat inquires from customers of OTHER On Hold companies that want to complain about the service they’re getting.

We think we know why we receive complaints about other providers.  Customers often think we’re their provider because there are so many on hold companies that have a company name similar to ours…..so, when someone Googles “On Hold Marketing”, they see our listing first (since we have earned the #1 position with the major search engines).

Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not complaining.  When the offended customer realizes that we’re not the company that offended them, they often become customers…and the world becomes a better place.

The question is “Why are our competitors creating so many complaints about lack of service, incomplete productions, not returning phone calls, and productions…and choose to remain invisible and apparently uninterested in customer satisfaction?”  Naturally, we can’t answer this because we’re not them, but we do see it as an increasing trend. 

It’s true, we do make it easy to find us…which has contributed to us hearing complaints about our competitors.   I guess that’s the point.  We do complete productions on time, return phone calls, and work hard to get customers to update their audio On Hold programs…and when you need to find us…we’re easy to find. You’ll find all our contact info on our On Hold player and invoices, or just google “On Hold Marketing”…we’ll be #1.

If you’re not a student of inbound telephone call statistics, you may not be aware that every business day, many phone calls are terminated before the sale or transaction is made because callers don’t like to wait on hold in silence…and they hang-up!

Ok, there may be other reasons why people hang up early.  Maybe their tea-pot started whistling, or the baby cried, or the dog was eating their homework…but much of the time, it’s because the caller felt like their On Hold experience was not up to par with their expectation of customer service. 

That is to say that their perception of the time in waiting was too long…

…and their response is to disconnect or hang-up, terminating the sale or transaction

…and possibly the relationship present and future.

Enter Albert Einstein and his Theory of Relativity, commonly expressed as E=mc² .

This, thankfully, for the rest of us, has also been expressed like this:

“When you sit with a nice girl for two minutes, it seems like two seconds.

             Put your hand on a hot stove for two seconds, it seems like two minutes.

                         That’s relativity.”

The way your callers perceive their elapsed time On Hold is relative.

- A pleasant On Hold experience will be perceived as a less time than actual

- An unpleasant On Hold experience will be perceived as more time than           actual. (Ouch!)                                                                                                  

Making an On Hold experience more painful than it needs to be is simply wrong…and bad for business…especially when there are intelligent, proven, and cost effective methods to cause On Hold time to be perceived as shorter than it actually is.

Want to create a more pleasant On Hold experience that’s seems shorter rather than longer ?  Get in touch with a real studio specializing in On Hold message creation, preferably a member of the On Hold Messaging Association.

One of the beauties of a customized On Hold program is the ability to tell callers about products and services you offer that they may not know about. But be careful of trying to include everything you do in your On Hold program. 

Remember when the Yankees beat the Phillies in the 2009 World Series? Joe Girardi opted for a three-man rotation, even though he mostly used a five-man rotation during the regular season. Part of his thinking was “why use my fourth or fifth best pitchers in the games that matter the most, against the best team in the other league.” 

You can apply this concept to your On Hold program.  

Sure, you can include 15 or 18 topics/messages. But unless you have extraordinarily long hold times like the phone company, cable company, tech support or notorious long hold queues, you don’t really need an extremely long program. In fact, more messages can actually dilute the effectiveness of the messages you do wish to feature.  If your callers are on hold long enough to only hear one or two messages at a time, and you’ve got 15 messages in your program, how many messages are they NOT hearing? Or to put it another way, if you’ve got 15 messages, the odds are 15 to 1 that any message in particular is not being heard. Now, if you can identify your 6 or 8 most important topics, and just include messages on those topics, it’s 8 to 1 that your most important message is being heard. Better odds.  

Not unlike using your three best starters in the World Series. Ask Charlie Manuel how his #4 starter did in Game 4. 

Call us to talk about the most effective number of messages for your On Hold program.