Add Custom On Hold Music to Your Microsoft Teams Meetings
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, we have seen a huge shift to remote working, we’ve all had issues in the past few months, trying to get in touch with various businesses. This was to be expected at the beginning of the outbreak when businesses were solely focused on overcoming the immediate requisites for working from home and remaining operational.
But even now, many operations are still overlooking the caller experience, and how it has a significant impact on revenue and customer satisfaction scores. After all, 90% of callers will hang up after 40 seconds of silence, and 34% of those callers will not try a second time.
How COVID-19 has changed the caller experience?
Staff are busier in the Post-Pandemic world and may take longer to answer the phone – from the moment it starts ringing because they’re wrapping up existing calls, finishing the sentence they’re halfway through writing or trying to wrangle children out of their home office.
Plus, businesses with traditional on-site PBX equipment may be diverting calls without the typical on-hold experience for callers, meaning callers miss the on-site on-hold messaging and may only get a dialing tone to inform them they are still on the line. Though, others may not be so lucky.
These delays and sub-standard experiences will have a knock-on effect on customer satisfaction scores, driving customers to try a competitor instead. Therefore, addressing these issues is vitally important for businesses that rely on telephone communication, whether it’s through the sales-cycle or after-sales support; otherwise, they risk losing new business and existing customers.
How have businesses managed to stay in touch with callers?
Unified Communication solutions and hosted telephony platforms have helped businesses throughout the country get over remote working communications issue. These systems provide a load of benefits, including being able to route calls directly to employee’s mobile phones, along with maintaining on the on-hold experience, which has been perfect for reacting to the outbreak.
However, businesses with older on-site PBX solutions or plain-old landline phones will have had to mask their network providers to manually re-direct calls, which means callers wouldn’t get the typical on-hold messages when they call. The call would simply be routed to an employee’s phone number with a typical dial tone.
Especially since Teams launched and COVID kicked-off we’ve noticed a barrage of questions around whether our music on hold is compatible with hosted systems and the likes of Microsoft Teams and its Direct Calling functions.
Does Microsoft Teams work with my “hosted” telephony system?
The answer is yes. In fact, they’ve been compatible since June 2019! However, you’ll need to create a ‘Cloud call queue’ and upload the recording there. While this is a perfectly adequate option, we’d recommend speaking to your communications provider.
For direct calling, the typical process isn’t much different to how it used to be with a traditional PBX, but instead of saving the audio files to your on-site equipment, it’s a matter of simply uploading it to the hosted platform or forwarding on the new recording to your UC provider to incorporate into their system.
Final Thoughts…
No matter what system your businesses uses; on-site, hosted, UC or PSTN, your callers’ on-hold experience is a vital aspect of their entire customer journey. Considering that 70% of calls are placed on hold or transferred at some point, enriching that experience as much as possible means you’re giving your teams the best chance of a win.
If your business could do with some updated Music-on-Hold messaging – whether you want to answer FAQs or upsell your products – Contact Original On Hold, and we’ll make the process super-straightforward for you and your customers!
