Every interaction you have with your customer is vital to the success of your business. From the radio and TV commercials you run to get customers in the door. To the way you treat the customer after the sale.
Everything you do needs to be designed to communicate your message.
Why should it be any different when a customer calls you on the phone?
Think about this. A customer has taken the time to pick up the phone to call you. Maybe that customer is ready to make a huge purchase. Or maybe a question about your product or service needs to be answered.
Regardless of the nature of the call, you have another opportunity to interact with that customer. However, the person who answers the phone isn’t the one who can answer the question. So the caller is placed on hold. 
If that caller hears silence it may seem like they’ve been hung up on and they may hang up.
Or worse, what if that caller gets placed on hold and hears a radio station that is running a commercial for one of your competitors? Uh-oh! That can be a huge problem. You may lose that customer and the sale to your competition and probably never even realize it.
There are also legal ramifications to playing a radio station or other music to your on-hold callers. If you don’t have an ASCAP license you can’t legally play copyrighted music through your phone system. And even though the radio station you’re playing to callers has paid its ASCAP fees you still aren’t legally able to retransmit that signal. The radio station likely won’t mind — they want all the listeners they can get. However, playing a radio station over the phone is actually a violation of the law.
But with a telephone on-hold message, you can solve these problems. And give yourself another opportunity to sell to that customer. First, your customer will realize they haven’t been disconnected. Second, they’re hearing about your business.
You’re reinforcing your sales message. You can tell the customer how important you think they are. Plus you can tell them about products or services they might not be aware of.
Third, you won’t be violating any music copyright laws with a custom-produced telephone on-hold message.
You never want to leave customers on hold for very long, but it’s an inevitable part of daily business. Why not use that time to make your customer feel important and take another opportunity to interact with your customers?
I began producing telephone messages-on-hold for clients across the country more than 15 years ago. A custom-produced on-hold message can be updated on a regular basis to reflect changes in products, services, prices, and specials. They’re easy to update for holidays or special promotions. And they’ll give your business an edge over the competition.
Take a listen to my On-Hold Messages demo right now. If you’d like to learn more about telephone on-hold messaging please call me at (303) 915-9317 or email me at tim@weboutloud.com.
