Can an On Hold Message Improve Business?
By Rich McPharlin
Most business owners who are interested and motivated in running their business look for ways and means to improve the business productivity and that means improving customer relations. One way to do this is by having the right on hold messages for when customers phone and have to be kept on hold.
Statistics show that without anything to listen to, customers who have to wait on the phone will hang up within about 30 seconds. But if they have an on hold message and music to listen to they will often wait for up to three minutes. The benefits are immediately apparent as your staff will have many more customers to talk to if they do not hang up so soon. More customers mean more business.
There are certain other benefits when you have the right on hold messages for your customers to listen to.
· It not only keeps the customers on the phone for longer, it puts them in a better mood so that they are easier to deal with.
· You can use the messages to impart important information about products that the customers may find useful.
· You can brand your company with the right kind of messages.
· You can reassure the customer that they are important to you as a business.
· You can inform them about other goods or services they or their friends may need.
· It presents your business in a professional light. Most customers are now used to on hold messages and if there are none they feel like the business is disorganised or unprofessional.
It is true that communication is extremely important in customer relations. When you communicate clearly and effectively it makes the customer feel valued both as a person and as a customer. They will therefore be far more likely to deal with you again and to recommend you to their friends. Having hold music and messages is a time-honoured way to ensure that is what happens to your customers.
Having on hold messages gives your company one more way to hold conversation with a customer, even if it is only a one-way conversation. The importance of having the right on hold massages cannot be emphasised enough. The wrong messages or no message at all is really off-putting to the most patient customer.
You only have to think about how you feel yourself in a similar situation. Hearing no messages makes you want to hang up very quickly. But if a voice comes on every so often with a message it keeps you interested. For a start, you think for a few seconds that it is a real live person talking to you at long last. By the time you realise it is not you have become interested in what is being said, so you stay on the line to hear it out.
The voice reassures you that your needs will be attended to in a short time and so you think you may as well stay there and wait a bit longer. Compare this with how you feel when there is no message. It is like the company couldn't care less whether you are there or not.
Hold messages increase customer satisfaction by reducing the fear generated by being placed on hold.
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/6525777
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