Message On hold: The Basics Of Customer Service and Retention

Waiting is an inevitable and even necessary aspect of human life. We wait in line at the grocery store, for red lights to turn green, and for movie trailers to finally stop so we can see the movie we paid to see.  One of the more frustrating waiting experiences is when we are forced by a business to wait on hold.    I’ve called you to spend my hard earned money, and you make me wait in order for this to happen? This clearly makes no sense.

We’ve all heard that when it comes to online marketing, you have just a few short, precious seconds to capture and engage the visitor before they’re off searching the competition.  This problem goes far beyond the internet.  In fact, studies show that callers who wait on hold in silence hang-up  within a brief time, and that nearly 40% of those callers will never call you back.  Ouch!

Meeting and exceeding customers’ expectation are a few of the key foundations into building your credibility and earning their trust. A high quality customer service helps in creating brand loyalty, and every business should understand that happy and loyal customers is what keeps the business going.

For any business, large or small, top-caliber customer service means having professional on hold message playing while callers are put on hold. It may not seem important, but apparently, this brief delay is basically the reason why many customers don’t call back, eventually resulting to losing customers in the long run if nothing is done to prevent it.

Aside from entertainment, on hold messages also makes the wait feel a little shorter. Imagine a situation where you have to go through a two-hour travel. You sit down comfortably and start reading some book. Before you know it, you already arrived at your destination, and it felt as if you only read a couple of pages! While you’re fully aware that the train ride is 2-hours, it only felt like 30 minutes as if time flew so fast while you were deeply immersed in the book you’re reading.

The same thing happens with music on hold &  messages. Having a relevant and informative message will make the on hold time feel shorter, but without it, the waiting time feels longer, and it just gets more annoying as each second ticks by. by the minute.

This is all because perceived time is far different from the real time we see in our watch, and while we are not actually timing the length of the wait, the time ticking in our heads feels faster than the actual time is. This is because when we get no feedback from something, we feel like there’s something wrong with the system, or in the on hold waiting case, it seems like we are being forgotten or cut off by the representative who’s supposed to help us a few minutes ago.

And, you know what happens next when the caller feels unimportant? They hang up! And, the fat chance of a callback is close to zero! It may be close to impossible to attend to your callers’ needs right away, but with the right message on hold system  complete with relevant information you’ll help to keep callers engaged, informed, entertained and willing to wait on the line until you can service their needs.