How often have you heard “Don’t put me On-hold!”. I’ll be you’ve thought that a few times yourself!
Being On-Hold is often a frustrating experience. But let’s break it down and examine why it’s frustrating.
Taking your time
Number one, it’s taking your time. Time that could be spent doing other t things. And companies that have long hold times (we’re talking more than 5 minutes or so), really need to evaluate t their staffing or procedures for handling calls.
Silence
Ah…the dreaded silence. Have I been disconnected? Am I being transferred? Did I just get put into the phone system’s Black Hole? (most phone systems have one of those, you knew that right? Somewhere that callers go, never to be heard from again!) As a business, putting your callers On-hold to silence is one of the worst things you can do to hurt your Caller Experience. It’s like asking people to stand in line with a blindfold on. They’re just not going to stick around! But give them something relevant and interesting to listen to while they’re On-Hold, and the wait time will seem very much diminished!
It’s all about me
If you do have an On-Hold message…congratulations on “getting it”. Now what does it say? You see, callers want to hear about themselves. They want to hear how your service or products are going to make their lives better…how they are going to impact them. They don’t want to hear a message that is all about you. All about how long you’ve been in business. How great you or your products are. This comes across the phone lines as “blah, blah, blah”. But tell a story, make the caller the star, and you’ll experience a much happier customer when you pick up the phone!
Changing the message
One of the keys to having a great caller experience, is to keep the message current and up to date. So how do you do that? How do you know when to change it, how often to change it, and what to change? That depends on a number of factors. What is the profile of your caller? In other words, do they call in regularly, once a week or month or year? Or do they interact with you heavily for a week, then not at all for a couple of months? How long are they On-Hold? What are the top 3 or 4 things callers are asking about when they call in? Is there information that would really be helpful for them to hear? These are some of the questions that we discuss with you to help walk through the process of creating a complete On-Hold program.
It’s not just as simple as slapping a message on your phones, and checking that off the to-do list. If you really want a powerful Caller Experience, it takes understanding your business, understanding your caller, and understanding how people think. If you’d like help with that, we’d be glad to setup a time to talk. It won’t cost you anything.
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