The Art Of Improving Your Telephone Customer Service With An On Hold Message

It’s no secret nowadays that the standard of customer service can make or break a business. Every day, customers are being frustrated by a variety of different mishaps: poor product performance, hidden company policies, not being taken seriously by telephone customer service reps, and above all long on-hold times.

On a scale from one to ten, how well would your customers rate the on hold experience at your brand? Most business owners are naive about hold times at their business, however asking a caller to wait, even for a few moments can be critical for any business. 

“Your call is important to us,” is an all too familiar statement companies always say when you get placed on-hold. But what kind of customer service do they really provide, and is your call really important to them?

Never tell a caller “your call is very important to us”.

It insults their intelligence, because if the call was that important, you’d find a way to have someone pick up the phone. 

Excuses are the easiest things to manufacture, and the hardest things to sell. When you consider the marketing investment spent to generate a lead, you would most certainly want to make the most out of every in-coming call! Customer service isn’t a science, but rather an art form. When it comes to hold time and customer service, an on hold message is the Picasso of the telephone on hold experience.

The last thing a caller wants to hear is that they are going to be put on hold. When a caller is on hold, even 40 seconds seems like an eternity. In fact, most callers will abandon the call right around that 40 second mark. One way to break this perception of an unreasonable amount of time on hold is to embrace on hold message programming for your waiting callers on hold.

Survey after survey has concluded that having a custom designed on-hold message reduces caller hang-ups, and makes the business look more professional. Poor telephone customer service and lost calls have a significant impact on a company’s bottom line, but the good news is the risk can be mitigated with an on-hold message by ensuring customers remain engaged and informed even while on hold. In fact, callers will remain on hold longer when subjected to an on-hold message than any other option (silence, canned music, radio).      

No one will be surprised to hear that research reveals that bad service can harm your business, and consumers are influenced by the type of customer service experiences they have. A number of studies have been conducted, which highlight consumer perceptions of on hold message programming, and the results show that a custom designed on hold message acts as reinforcement, improves standards of call handling and provides for a better overall customer service experience.