Why You Need Phone Messages on Hold

Why do you need phone messages on hold? Aren't they annoying? Aren't you bombarding your callers with nothing but advertising?

The first question is easy to answer. If you have only silence on your phone, 60% of your callers will hang up after a minute. 60%!!! I don't like that, do you? So, if you're in business (profit or non-profit) and you have to put callers on hold, you'll have more of them waiting for you if you let them know they haven't been abandoned.

Phone messages on hold can be annoying. Especially if all you are doing is giving your callers one commercial after another about your products or services. If you show a little more interest in them, they'll stick around longer. Try something like, "What you have to say is important to us. Please don't hang up. Someone will be right with you." Or maybe, "We value your time. Someone will be with you momentarily."

The music behind phone messages on hold can be annoying, too. It's often distorted or outdated, or both. We produce our own in-house music, using just a few instruments such as soft acoustic guitars, flutes bass, and soft drums. The purpose of the music is to let your caller know that you haven't hung up on them. Besides reassuring them, the music calms them, too. Hard rock or rousing symphonic music isn't going to calm them. Soft acoustic guitars will. There are exceptions to the rule, of course. For example, if you sell car stereos, you may want to jack up the excitement level of the music a notch or two. But you don't need to yell at your callers. A friendly voice will do.

The way to avoid blatant advertising in your phone messages is to give callers helpful information about your company or organization. I suggest, "Do you know our business hours? Ask us about them when we come back on the line. And thanks for holding." Or try, "It's a little difficult to find us. We're located on Elm Street in a bright yellow building right behind Wal-Mart. We'll be happy to give you directions when we come back on the line. And thank you for waiting." Your callers will realize you are being helpful instead of hijacking their time with commercials about how wonderful you are.

You can find out more about our phone messages on hold services at http://audiobag.com/messagesonhold.html. Thank you for reading. We'll be producing your audio very soon.