When a customer calls your business and are placed on hold, it makes sense to use this time to play promotional messages instead of forcing them to listen to dead air. On the phone at the point of sale is a good time to play whatever you are selling. On hold messages are done by on hold companies that write the material, then are voiced over by professional artists, then mixed with targeted music that plays in the background. The on hold messages are then played to customers by digital audio hardware.
Your Best Sales Person that Never Sleeps
The classic power of messages on hold is you can arrange for your very best salesperson to come online at this on hold moment to rivet your listener with your sales pitch. Otherwise they would be listening to parlor music played at the wrong time or just dead air time. For example: you call for delivery of the in-house special at the local spaghetti house and you are put on hold while another order is taken. The hold message tells you about the special for bread sticks for $1.99. When the receptionist comes back online you order the $1.99 special on bread sticks in addition to your order. The on hold advertising messages has just done its job.
Basic Information and Time Savings
Someone calls to find out your web address. The receptionist has another call and places that person on hold where he hears about the web address, the only reason he called in the first place. He has his information, hangs up, and the receptionist moves on with her day waiting for more important callers.
Branding Yourself
You want the public to be aware of your unique selling proposition and no doubt spend a lot of money for promotion but did you realize that for less than a dollar a day every call that is placed on hold by our business will hear your marketing message? If the average business gets a 100 calls, the per impression cost is almost zero.
Managing Perceptions
When you are put on hold and there is nothing but silence don’t you wonder if you have been hung up on? Then you start to build a bad opinion of the company because you realize that they are not thinking about every experience you have with the company. Whether it be on hold, in person, or the dead silence your customer has just listened to — all of these aspects contribute to the formation of an attitude towards your company. Strategic use of your on hold message service can reassure the customer that their needs will be taken care of shortly.
When you want to provide an on hold message to your customers at precisely the right moment it just might be time to use a custom scripted on hold messaging service. If you are in fact a state of the art business that thinks of every aspect of your customers experience with you, then why not give them everything they deserve with your service. You want your customers to enjoy the time they spend with you when they physically visit your business, don’t you want them to have the same experience when they call?
For less than a dollar a day you can have this service literally at your fingertips. The cost is so slight should you endanger losing a returning customer and all the money they will spend with you just because you do not want to spend less than a dollar a day? Your accountant would tell you that it can be written off as a business expense anyway. On hold advertising is a small price to pay for doing business in a world that values the needs of customers.