5 things to consider when creating your on hold message

Having a professionally voiced and produced on hold message can improve your caller's experience. Callers who wait on hold while listening to music and messaging are likely to stay on the line longer compared to callers who wait in silence.

Your message is an excellent opportunity to share information about your business and market your products, but you should be cautious about how you go about doing that. Here are some things to consider when creating your message on hold:

Be careful not to annoy.

Let's face it. No one likes to wait on hold. Being put on hold is annoying. A key factor of excellent customer service on the phone is to minimize your customer's annoyance with you and manage their anxiety. The more irritated a caller is, the more likely they are to hang up. If they hang up, you lose business.

The length and variety of your music and messaging will have an impact on the caller's mood. Short messages that repeat every few seconds will drive them batty. So will music with a quick and repetitive melody. Keep things friendly, light, professional, and informative. You should also watch the length of your messages and the type of music you choose. That leads to the next few points.

Be smart about the length of your messages.

If you generally have a longer wait time, you might want to have shorter messages with a good music selection playing in between the narration. No one wants to listen to talking for 5 minutes straight. If callers are only on hold for a minute or so, you can get away with less space in your messaging. Remember, the point of your messages on hold is to keep the caller entertained and somewhat engaged, so they don't hang up. Be careful about trying to deliver as much marketing information as possible to every caller on hold.

Make good music selections.

If you don't know what kind of music to choose, ask the professionals at On Air. The purpose of music between on hold messages was to give the listener a moment to absorb the message they just heard. It also helps pass time and makes waiting more bearable. You want to choose music that will keep a person calm and happy. As mentioned, repeating melodies are annoying, and bland elevator music will not provide a positive experience for them either.

Use information that is interesting to the caller.

You might find every detail about your industry or business fascinating, and that's why you're great at what you do. Still, that doesn't mean your callers will. You want to keep the caller engaged and alert and promote some sales materials too. Making sure the messaging isn't repetitive, has a good variety and isn't too long between music breaks can help with that. If you're not sure what to include in your message on hold, On Air can help with that too.

Stay away from too much repetition.

On hold messages that are too structured will seem repetitive. Things that repeat can easily annoy, especially when someone is already slightly irritated to be waiting in the first place. Instead, make sure your messages and music are varied. For example, you could cluster short marketing messages in groups of two or three with short music breaks in between. Then give the caller a much longer music break, about a minute or so, before they hear more talking. Keeping things unpredictable will hold attention and make waiting easier for the caller.

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