A Viable Alternative to Dead Air

How long will you stay on the phone when you’re put on hold and forced to listen to silence? How long will your customers? If you are regularly placing your callers on hold and offering them no value during that time, they will start to feel unappreciated and resentful, thereby leaving a negative view of your company in their minds. However, there is an alternative.

Whether your customers are on hold for 10 seconds while transferring the call or for 15 minutes while waiting in the queue, you can provide them with valuable information to keep them engaged with your company. For instance, how about sharing your latest offerings or specials? FAQs about the business and your operating procedures? Even fun trivia will keep listeners on the line.

America On Hold creates on-hold commercials. These brief, value-laden messages are written by dedicated scriptwriters who know your brand and work with you to share exactly what your customers want and need to know while they’re on hold.

But there is an effective way to share commercials and a not-so-effective way.

As human beings, we cannot process too much information at one time. So if you’re bombarding your callers with multiple messages one right after the other, they’re likely to tune out pretty quickly. Instead, try a different method: intersperse your commercials with some music to allow them to digest and transition. Then they’ll be ready to hear your next offering and stay engaged with your brand while on hold.

Or you could just stick with silence.

What Are You Holding Onto?

If you have or work for a successful company, the likelihood is that customers who call into your office will have to be put on hold, whether that’s for 30 seconds or 15 minutes. The real question is: What are they hearing when they’re on hold?

For too many companies, it’s either silence or bland music interspersed with “Your message is important to us; we’ll be on the line as soon as possible.” If your customers are on hold for a matter of seconds, this could be fine, but if they’re on hold long enough to take a stake in the music or message droning in their ear, you might want to consider upping the stakes.

On-hold messaging offers an alternative to just music. That alternative is marketing. Marketing on the phone is painless; you have a captive audience who is waiting to speak with you, so why not talk to those people? Instead of leaving them to their own thoughts about what’s for dinner or what they’re going to wear tomorrow, give them juicy information about your business, your latest offers, or what they should talk to the representative about when she comes back on the phone.

One major concern many companies have about moving to an on-hold messaging campaign is cost. If you get this much value on the phone, it must be astronomically expensive, right? Wrong. In fact, on-hold messaging may be the most cost-effective component of your integrated marketing efforts! And it may also be your most effective, given that the messages are targeted and already reaching people who want to learn more about your company.

So offer your callers an alternative to the silence and the loud elevator music that may be causing them to hang up the phone. Try marketing to them instead.