Medical Office On Hold Messages and Music On Hold Strategies

If you’re marketing your medical practice, every time that phone rings, you have paid for that ring to occur! However, once that phone rings, and you ask a patient to be put on hold, do you return to the line to find that they’re no longer there? This is an area many practices struggle with (or any business for that matter).

Here’s a scenario: A prospective new patient, or even an existing one for that matter calls your medical office and wants to make an appointment; your staff is extra busy with the new health care changes. There’s no doubt that you have a high probability of asking the caller to remain waiting on hold before you can serve them.

Once your staff has placed a caller on hold, what are they going to hear? Some practices play music or radio, giving you no control over the content. Do you really want to broadcast a competitor’s ad to your patients on hold? Many medical practices don’t take into consideration the caller on hold time at all, and simply leave callers waiting in “dead-air”. Why give your patients the “silent treatment” when you put them on hold? Instead, why not use hold-time wisely by filling those valuable seconds with new service promotions, patient education, and other practice-specific messages.

According to a Google Survey,  if a business keeps callers on hold longer than 4 minutes, it will lose 90% of those callers due to hang-ups.  Statistics also show that with custom branded on hold messaging, callers will wait up to three minutes, giving you the chance to serve them. Numbers don’t lie, and the numbers say that on hold music and message programming is the best on hold solution for your business!

Listed below are just a just a few of the many topics you can include in your music on hold recording.

• Qualifications of your doctors and staff

• Remind patients of the importance of wellness screening

• Provide health tips

• Inform them of office policies and procedures

• Make them aware of what they should bring to each visit

• Introduce new patient specials/new treatment options/add-ons

• Prescription refill policies

• Insurances and Financing Options

• Hours and Location

• Guide them to resources on your website

On hold marketing is truly a unique, highly targeted and invaluable in-bound marketing opportunity for you to differentiate yourself from competing area practices, while growing yours! According to Call Center Today, callers who are exposed to messages on hold, results in a 25% increase in offerings mentioned while on-hold. This can mean some real added profit centers for your medical practice.

Additionally, when you implement a custom message and music on-hold strategy at your medical offices, you can improve efficiency of your office staff by helping to answer frequently asked questions such as hours and location which cause increased hold times. By answering these common questions, you help to reduce hold time, freeing up staff to handle other tasks.

Remember that callers represent two highly targeted audiences to whom you can gear your on-hold marketing message to – new patients and existing ones, making custom on hold messaging one of the most effective tools for your medical practice to enhance patient communication, increase revenues, and strengthen patient loyalty, all while providing a better customer experience. And, callers who are more satisfied with their experience with your office are more likely to refer their friends and family.

Have a question or comment on how you can take key steps in improving patient education, satisfaction and loyalty with on hold messaging for your medical office? Let us know in the comments section below.