If you’re conscious about the time and money you’re spending for your business, you would want to maximize every minute and even seconds, to help offer more value to your clients. Excellent customer service is one of the best ways to do this, which is why it’s important to find the best on hold message provider for your business.

But what about your callers? What if there’s no one available to take their call and handle their concerns? Of course, the quickest answer would be to put them on hold. However, you have to remember that customers may not want to wait for someone to attend to their needs.

On Hold Message For Business

They can drop the call anytime they like. This is where on hold messaging enters and plays a vital part. To illustrate this behaviour more clearly, let’s take a look at the following figures:

  • Callers tend to drop their call after only a couple of seconds if what they hear from the other side of the line is merely DEAD SILENCE.
  • Customers are willing to stay on the line an additional 30 seconds if music is played while they wait.
  • Callers are willing to wait for their calls to be taken for as long as 3 minutes if an on hold message is played.
  • 85% of callers prefer to hear on hold messages, over silence.

By playing informative and interesting audio on hold, callers don’t feel bored while they wait. This can even help you pitch in your products and invite customers to your upcoming events. Allowing you to sell passively in this vital space. It’s also practical for you to know how on-hold messaging works to know what to expect from the providers.

To ensure you’ll find a reliable on hold messaging service provider, look into the following questions first before searching for the right one:

6 Questions To Ask When Searching For On Hold Message Provider

1. What Type Of On Hold Messages You Need In A Year?

To begin with, you have to determine how many times you’re going to need on hold messages over the year. You also have to decide on the type of message (e.g., company information, details of upcoming activities, product details) you’re going to play.

Quick tip: You can also opt for holiday-inspired messages – such as for Valentine’s Day, Christmas and New Year’s Day – to increase your sales during specific seasons and to play current.

2. What Is Your Budget Range?

Knowing you ultimately need to get ROI from your expenses, it’s a must to set a budget for your on hold messaging solution before looking for a provider. Doing this helps you find a provider offering budget-friendly services to suit your needs and goals.

Besides, it’s easy to lose track of the money aspect in the process of chasing after quality. However, this shouldn’t be the case. All that needs to be done is to balance quality and price

3. Does On Hold Messaging Company Offer Reliable Voice Over Talent?

Voice quality contributes a large amount, to how on hold messages sound to your callers. So make sure to test if the voice over talents, whose voice you’ll soon be hearing on the line, have a clear, welcoming voice that meets your target market.

Also, see if they can deliver your scripts effectively and clearly, so that the listener will be able to hear every detail of the message. And get your new promotions and details across in the short space that your on hold will have to play sometimes.

4. Do You Have A Compelling Script?

If you’ve decided to make your own script, be sure that it’s a concise, informative one. Avoid delivering lengthy messages because these will only bore the callers. Instead, look into the average time a caller is put on hold – determine the average length of time your clients can wait for their call to be taken.

Then you can come up with a script that’s long enough to cover that space of time. Apart from this, you need to include all the necessary details about your company (e.g. product launches, upcoming events, contact numbers, website) to introduce yourself to clients and to get those all important details across.

5. Do You Like Your Message To Be Changed From Time To Time?

You also need to talk to the prospective provider about the number of times you want to change your messages in a year. Do you like it to be changed depending on the holidays and festivities? Do you like to have a universal message which you can play any time regardless of holidays or time of year?

Or would you like to change your messages depending on the release dates of your new products? If you have plans to change the messages frequently. You can talk to the vendor about this and ask for any packages or offers that allow you to do the necessary changes.

6. Does Your Provider Lock You Into A Contract?

Lastly, you don’t want to get stuck with a provider who locks you into a long 24 month contract. Without knowing that they are going to treat you with the service you deserve and the quality on hold messages that you need.

Quick tip: Get a provider that has NO LOCK IN contracts and you will find yourself with excellent customer service and a company that really does care for your business as much as you do. See results with custom, no lock in contract On Hold Messages.

Conclusion

Overall, you certainly need to consider your business needs (e.g., more sales, better visibility) and goals (e.g., higher profit, outstanding customer handling) first before selecting an on hold messaging service provider.

By answering these questions, you’ll be able to find the best on hold message provider that is well suited to your needs without compromising on quality and budget. All of these can help you appreciate why on-hold messages are really important in business. You can also refer to this short tutorial on how to write an effective on-hold marketing program.