Nobody wants to be put on hold when they call a business, especially in today’s world of too many tasks, and too little time to get them all done. Being put on hold is a certain way to irritate even the most patient caller. The worst offenders put their callers on hold with dead space, leaving the caller to wonder if they’ve been disconnected. While you have your caller’s attention and ear, you should be using that time to your advantage and to his. You want to think like a caller, and do what you can to not only give him your message, but make it worth his while to be on hold.

"Did I Get Disconnected?"

While you have a caller on the line waiting for your attention, you have an opportunity to not only make an impression on him about your company, but also promote your company’s products, services, and special promotions. With a creative on-hold message, you can educate, sell, entertain, or all three at the same time, resulting in lower frustration for your callers and better returns for your business.

Don’t be afraid of the technology or the unknown. The range of options and prices may surprise you. There are many equipment options available today for on-hold marketing and phone systems, including virtual on hold systems. The equipment prices at the low end allow even a home-based business to enjoy the benefits of on-hold marketing. With the technology available, every business, no matter the size or location, can use their on-hold time to their advantage.

So, what should you look for in a reputable, professional on-hold company?

1) An experienced on-hold messaging service provider should have a list of equipment options available for you to choose from and a knowledge about the benefits and drawbacks of each. Prices should be clear and up-front, with no hidden costs.

2) They should be able to either install the on-hold equipment for you, guide you through it, or arrange for it to be professionally installed.

3) You should have your choice of either male or female professional voice talent, with demos available of each.

4) The music a reputable on-hold marketing studio uses should be royalty-free, or the company should offer licensing as part of the price.

5) A professional on-hold message company will offer a choice of music styles. If you get lucky, you’ll find an on-hold company run by gifted musicians (like New England Multimedia) who custom-write original material for every on-hold message.

6) Scriptwriting should be part of the package. If you want to write your own on-hold message script to save money, be sure to read it out loud yourself and see how long your message is with breaks, or you may get caught in a frustrating cycle of emails back and forth with the company as they instruct you to cut, and then cut some more.

7) A professional on-hold marketing company should offer to contact you a couple of weeks before an update is due, to give you time to get your marketing materials together.

Did you know?: New England Multimedia started out exclusively as an on-hold marketing company called “Soundtrax Unlimited,” with little more than a 4-track recorder, keyboard, guitar, bass, and microphone. Scott literally picked up the Yellow Pages and began cold-calling every business in the book to offer our telephone on-hold message services; at one point, he was the voice of nearly every Auto Body Shop in Rhode Island! Back in those days, he’d hook up a standard CD player to a business’s phone system to get them up and running. Script-writing, voiceovers, and all-original music with quarterly updates kept them coming back, and that’s how we paid the bills while Scott built New England Multimedia into a multimedia business offering website development, on-hold marketing, video production and more.

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Michelle handles all Social Media for New England Multimedia. You can contact her by email, on our Facebook, through LinkedIn, or on our Twitter profile.