Why You Need Custom On Hold Messages As a Sales Tool

Most aspects of your business depend on successful marketing strategies. It’s pretty simple, businesses can’t survive without marketing. Marketing is a process by which a product or service is introduced and promoted to potential customers. Using marketing to promote your product, service and company provides your business with a chance of being discovered by prospective customers.

You have to use marketing strategies to create product or service awareness. But while most businesses are focused on the latest magic trends, and the ever-changing digital marketing landscape, for some reason, either due to having their head in the sand, lack of attention or overlooking the obvious, most business owners are really convinced that they rarely ever put callers on hold (for a variety of reasons), let alone the fact that they need a successful on hold marketing strategy.

Here are a few typical misconceptions business owners have about putting callers on hold:

• We never put callers on hold. Really, so you have somehow figured out the one thing no business owner has ever figured out in the history of business, which is “never placing callers on hold”?  What about when the caller needs to be transferred to a particular staff member? How about when you have high call volume? What happens when you have to check stock/inventory for a caller?
  

• We answer our calls quickly. That’s fantastic, however no customer cares about how quickly you answer their call, it’s the caller experience they care about and especially as it relates to on-hold time. Unfortunately, in business you don’t get an award for answering a call quickly. You get an award by keeping callers on the line and making a sale.
  

• If a staff member or department is unavailable, the call gets transferred to voicemail. During the transfer process, callers still have wait time, and instead of ignoring that opportunity, you can broadcast your marketing message. Sell Sell Sell!

Instead of falling into the misconception trap, let’s look at some real statistics when it comes to both marketing and on hold experiences at a business.

First the bad news:

– 70% of all business calls are placed on hold.

                                         – 60% of callers who wait in silence hangup in less than 1 minute.

   – 34% of callers who hangup won’t call back.

Now the good news:

    – 25% increase in sales with on hold message marketing.

 – 40% increase in inquiries of products/service mentioned.

               – Callers will wait up t0 3 minutes when hearing on hold messages.

The statistics above prove that whether you would like to admit it or not, callers are very likely to get put on hold, and without having an on hold message in place the results are poor. But in retrospect, these statistics also clearly show there’s something you can do about it, and that when a business implements a successful on hold strategy both sales and profits can increase.

On hold messaging is an opportunity to connect and engage with a highly targeted and interested audience, which leads to sales as well as up-sells and cross-sells. Without employing on-hold messaging, these sales may not have ever happened; without sales, a company cannot succeed.

Conclusion

Custom on hold messages keep callers on the line, give off a positive brand impression, decrease strain on internal staff, and can even increase revenue. So if you are considering adding custom messaging to your marketing arsenal, then you’re heading in the right direction. To help you learn more about why on hold messaging is so important and how you can use it to your advantage, check out our On Hold Marketing Boot Camp; “30 Seconds to More Sales” or contact Original On Hold today!