On hold Message Gives The Right First Impression for Callers On hold

I’d like to start off this post by saying that you should never, I mean absolutely never place a caller on hold in dead silence. Why? Well besides the obvious that it’s rude,  you’ve spent valuable marketing dollars to get that person to call, and now your stopping the closing cycle — Why on earth would you want to do that? Even worse, callers get impatient quickly, frustration and anger set-in quickly, and chances are they will hang-up and never call again. Lucky for you if they’re truly interested, they may call you instead of calling a competitor, but if not, then you should do something about your on hold system.

There are many things that you should take into consideration when putting callers on hold, but let’s save that part for later. What you must understand is that the waiting caller is captive! Sure, they could eventually hang-up, but while you have their undivided listen attention, why not give them something entertaining, yet informative to listen to?

What happens when you give callers creative on hold messages to listen to while waiting? More than you think!

Studies show that callers will wait up to 3 times longer with on hold messages, giving you the chance to serve them.  Business who use on hold marketing achieve a 20% increase in sales of offerings mentioned on hold, and overwhelmingly 88% of callers prefer on hold messaging to silence or music.

If you still need further validation as to why your business needs custom music on hold & messages, here are 3 Top Reason on why you should have an on hold messaging system.

Reason #1: “You never get a chance at making first impressions.”

This quote may seem over a bit over used,  and out-played, but the fact remains, it’s exactly spot on! First impressions are important. A Bad first impression and you may lose that prospect forever, on the other hand make a great first impression, and you may have just won over a custom for life! Now if you really do a bang up job, you might just be able to gain the opportunity to give a first impression to a referral of one of those great first impression clients. But remember, bad news travel fast, and just like in those old Breck shampoo commercials, She told two first, and she told friends and so on, and so on….  A bad first impression or customer experience can be fatal to your business.

Reason #2: First time callers are skeptical and cynical even though they’re actually friendly.

Give these types of callers a break. Yes, you may be the best company in your industry especially in terms of customer handling, but you must also understand that the defenses of these first-time callers are up because they might have had a hard-time with their previous provider.  Do not give them a reason to believe that all companies are the same by providing them silence on hold or radio, or give them the cold shoulder with dead-silence.

The secret to these types of scenario is to make your callers feel at ease with your company with a professionally-crafted on hold message, you can let them get to know more about your company which somehow creates a connection between your brand, and the callers feel as though they’ve made the right decision in calling you!

Reason #3: You will easily run out of business if callers keep on hanging-up because of bad on hold experiences

Customers who are forced to listen to annoying music or tones, a bad on hold message, or worse silence will surely make them hang-up. When this happens, they actually move on to the next business hoping that they won’t get the same experience that they had with your company. Can you now imagine how ugly this scenario is? When this constantly happens, it will make you go poor, and your competitors will become rich. To make matters worse, caller abandonment (lost calls, hang-ups) cost business 60% of potential revenues. How about that for staggering?

Since callers have already made the first move in calling you, don’t make it something they’ll regret; give them a worthwhile experience by providing them a competent on hold marketing message, and Make every call count.