Everyone has been there- you call a business only to wait for the receptionist to take your call, and you end up listening to awful music on hold or a boring recording which tells you stuff that you already know. Or, worst of all, there is no hold music or recordings at all, and you start to wonder if the call is even still connected. This usually results in you hanging up, which means that you either don’t call back or you do call back, but you are irritated with the business and less likely to be satisfied by the outcome of the call.
Scenarios like this can be detrimental to a business for obvious reasons. If you own a small business in Australia or New Zealand, it is your responsibility to provide an enjoyable experience for your customers while they listen to messages on hold. While many people think that no onhold experience can be enjoyable, this is actually far from the truth. By providing clear, quality music or an informative recording, you can keep your customers satisfied while they wait for the opportunity to speak with you. This will reduce hangups and keep your customers happy… and if your customers are happy, your business will remain successful.
There is a common debate among business owners about on hold systems, specifically about whether the onhold messages should be looped or if they should play from the beginning for each individual customer. While the latter allows your customer to hear your message from the beginning, the former is actually much easier to do, more likely to get your entire message across, and arguably more effective at keeping customers satisfied while listening to telephone messages on hold. Depending on your average on hold time, customers who hear a recording from the beginning may never hear the second half of the message, which may contain important information- especially when it comes to medical on hold messages.
Looped recordings, however, whether they are medical messages on hold or otherwise, will play at the same time for every customer who is on hold. This is more economical for you and better for your customers, too. The key to success with looped recordings is making sure that the message is short and sweet. Get all of your information across in as few words as possible so that your customer can clearly hear the entire message. You could also play music in between the recordings or even split them up to keep things fresh. Once you find a perfect balance, you will see that you get way fewer hangups while your customers are listening to a message on hold.
In order to get the highest quality on hold messages, you should look into using a third-party company that specialises in such things. You can find high-quality companies in both Australia and New Zealand which will provide you with high quality on hold music or recordings, so shop around to find the best value. No matter who you choose, you can be sure that having a good system for keeping your customers satisfied while listening to messages or music onhold will be highly beneficial for your bottom line.
