Putting a customer on hold can either create a problem or an opportunity for your business, depending on how well you’ve planned.
Banishing your customers to a silent, endless hold that seems like it may well last forever creates a sense of uncertainty and anxiety. Repeatedly telling them that they’re important and that their call will be addressed in the order it was received brings cold comfort, but custom on-hold music can turn a caller’s dreadful expectation into a surprisingly pleasing reality.
Custom On-Hold Music
Your answering service undoubtedly tries to handle every caller as soon as it can, but sometimes callers have to wait to be connected to specific departments or people in your organization or practice.
During times of high call volume, it may simply be a necessity to put all callers into a queue until your answering service company can address their concerns. In these cases, your customers are left listening to the content you planned ahead of time. Many times, that ends up being nothing at all.
Silence may be golden for some, but your callers grow frustrated quickly with on-hold silence. They wonder if they’re still on hold, but even if they continue to hang on the line, the time passes much more slowly than it should as boredom sets in.
Instead of risking new customer accounts and the patience of your already loyal customers, you can make one small change to your on-hold policy that will mean the world to the whole bunch: adding custom on-hold music.
Custom on-hold music is just that, and it’s sometimes custom down to the little details. You can provide the exact music you’d like to play for your callers, along with any sales messages, cross promotions or messages played over music you want to be available during hold times.
Many businesses find that providing more than music alone makes for better-informed and happier customers. You can even use your custom on-hold music to answer common questions so some callers can skip your queues and get on with their day.
Instead of relying on your answering service’s generic on-hold music being good enough to keep your callers happy, choosing custom on-hold music means you’re making the decision to be in control of your callers’ total telephone experience. You pick the music you think they’ll enjoy, you select the messages to push to them during their wait and you maintain the power to change any of this, at any time.
Custom on-hold music is the ultimate tool for call atmosphere modification and a must-have for companies that rely heavily on virtual receptionists or answering service teams to support their business, be that as customer support or for sales.
