On-Hold Marketing Marketing Messages Create A Better Brand Experience

Misaligned on-hold music and messaging is rampant across every industry, and its impact on customers is significant, yet often overlooked! Customers call your business for a variety of reasons. From ordering products and seeking technical help to lodging complaints, the types of calls that representatives take are undoubtedly diverse. Because of this, your music on-hold and messaging should be targeted to all types of customers and their reasons for calling. Sure on hold marketing is wonderful for educating customers and increasing sales opportunities, but it serves a variety of needs, and you should be using them all.

If you don’t properly plan your music on hold marketing messages with your brand, you may unintentionally be irritating your customers. How? If you’ve ever been agitated by quirky music on-hold recording being replayed again and again while you hold waiting to speak with someone, then just imagine how your callers who contact you with a problem or complaint feels. If your brand has poor on hold music, couple that with an already agitated customer, and by the time your representative is able to answer their call, they’re well past their boiling point!

If the caller to your brand needs technical assistance, you can safely assume that they want a fast resolution to their problem and may be frustrated. Having these individuals listen to a promotional message inviting them to buy more from you is probably not the best idea. Instead, you could be offering tips to solve the most common issues while also thanking them for their business and patience.

Like with marketing collateral (eg print, website, etc), the music on hold that customers experience when they call a company is a very crucial touch point that should effectively represent a company’s brand. When they don’t match up with what callers are expecting, confusion, irritation, and even disengagement can occur. This ultimately increases the number of dropped calls and customer churn rates. This is most certainly a recipe for disaster for your brand.

This begs an important question. When you consider the cost of acquiring and retaining a customer, why isn’t every company ensuring that their music on hold recordings are fine-tuned for the brand for those who are listening to them?

Because the telephone phone system is most often the responsibility of a company’s IT department, it can be overlooked as a marketing tool that requires relevant, engaging content. Instead, systems are installed and managed with little thought into what the customer actually hears while on hold. Generic, poor quality, and even downright incorrect on-hold messages and irritating music are being looped to captive crowds of customers who have the ability to hang-up and take their business elsewhere.

To build an effective on-hold recording, it’s important to carefully consider your brand. Is it corporate, refined, hip d or more laid-back and casual? Do you have a history that dates back over 50 years or are you a high-flying start-up? Who are your customers? Why do they buy from you? The voice and music of your on-hold message should be the sound of your brand and reflective of what you sell whether it’s insurance, software, beauty supplies or men’s suits. With the proper strategy, you have a unique opportunity to communicate your commitment to providing great service while also strengthening your brand.

The statistics about branded music on hold and messaging are actually quite startling. A study from U.S. West concluded that information-focused on-hold messages increased caller retention by 40 percent. Another study conducted by the North American Telecommunications Association found that callers held up to three minutes longer when music and information were combined in on-hold messages.

In other words, on-hold marketing messages not only tell a brand’s story, they also share information on new products, provide service information, and even affect a caller’s mood.  The most successful on-hold recordings combine messages and music in a way that is entertaining, informative, and educational which will certainly keep callers on hold longer than a poor quality or non-existent recording.  The bottom line! When you have the right on hold marketing for your brand,  you improve the quality of the callers on-hold time, and the overall brand experience.