Why Every Small Business Should Have an On Hold Marketing Message
Whether you’re just getting started or you’ve been in business for yourself awhile, you can’t afford to miss any details when running a small business. You may not be worried about losing current customers, but you should be concerned about gaining future ones.
Here are 3 possible scenarios to consider why on-hold messaging and music makes sense for small businesses.
Scratchy On-Hold Music
Wow [COMPANY], could really care less about my wait time. This is awful…
There are many reasons scratchy on-hold music happens. Sometimes someone is playing around with the phone system that doesn’t know how it works. Other times, radio music is streamed through the phone which is illegal. The last thing you need is a nasty lawsuit on your hands, such as what happened to this small restaurant in North Carolina. And even more importantly, a good music on-hold company will know that some songs, especially on the cell phone, are more prone to sound scratchy and hard to hear than others. Either way, this scenario spells disaster for your business. Customers and prospects alike are likely to turn away, put the phone down or simply hang up.
No On-Hold Message or Music
Are they still there? How am I supposed to know? This is taking forever. Should I just hang up and call again?
While scratchy music is bad, having silence is one of the worst small business sins you could make. This is akin to literally asking your customers to just hang up and call again when you have time for them. The statistics are staggering – 70% of callers on-hold in silence will hang up within the minute. I don’t know about you, but it seems too risky not to have something playing on-hold.
On-Hold Message and Music:
Wow, I didn’t realize I could find out this information on their website. It’s neat that they are using my wait time to inform me about the industry.
The third and final scenario is the best option for your business, and it is preferable that you change your message and music at least twice a year, especially if you have a high call volume. Use the wait time to your advantage to point customers to helpful pages on your website; invite them to check you out on social media, if that’s your thing; talk to them about what’s going in your industry. They’ll thank you for it!
The bottom line is that if you own a small business, it is necessary to put people on-hold, and they get that. Just make sure that rather than resenting you and hanging up, the customer will pay even more attention to you.
It’s not really about customers being impatient about being put on hold; rather, it’s about how prospects and clients perceive you, your business, and how you treat them. An on hold marketing message tells your prospect that you care about the time they spend with you. It’s a detail that is always appreciated in addition to being useful to the caller.
