On-Hold Telephone Messaging

If your business is such where you have to attend a lot of phone calls from your customers then your might be put on hold on certain occasions. The on-hold telephone marketing is one of the most effective means to reach your customers and is inexpensive too.

Your business can opt to have the caller listen to some music, a radio station or if nothing else than dead air which is quite worse. Any of the above options don't give an opportunity to properly connect to your customer. Also to play the song that caller may listen when he is on hold you need permission or license from the owner to play that particular song. In case of letting the customer to listen to a radio station can be worse for you as your customer might listen to any advertisement given on the radio by your competitors. Thus a failure to control what your customer hears gives your competitors a chance to take away your customers from you. Thus a well designed on hold message can help you in a better way to reach your customers. Your message is herd by a captive audience who has already performed the first step by calling you. Even you can use these on hold messages to inform the customers about your latest products and services. When customers listen to something related to your business when they are on hold, they tend to stay online for longer periods might give a good response to what ever they herd. Recent study shows that:

•  When callers don't get to hear anything when they are on hold, most of them abandon their calls before the completion of one minute.

•  Callers who listen to music when they are on hold normally terminate their calls after one minute and thirty seconds.

•  Callers who get an opportunity to listen to any information about the business when they are on hold are likely to stay online for around 3 minutes.

You can use online marketing to:

•  Impress your customers by using well designed message.

•  Make your customers aware about your special promotions

•  Inform them about some of your products about which the customer online has little knowledge.

•  Inform the about you accomplishments and achievements

•  Persuade them to enquire about your products and services from your sales representative

Some studies have shown that a good on hold message can bring a 40% increase in retention of callers, a 15% increase in enquires and a 12% increase in demand for the product advertised through such a message. Your on hold systems should have the following features for it to be successful:

•  Message customization

•  Should be able to add and update your message

•  Choice of voice

•  Help in making your script

•  Should be technically advanced like automatic restart in case of a power failure.

On hold systems are normally not very expensive. There cost ranges from $160 for a basic system to $600 for an advanced system. Thus by spending less than $1000 you can have an effective marketing tool for your business.