“Repetitio est mater studiorum.”

Rendered in English, the statement above reads, “Repetition is the mother of learning.”  I won’t attempt a Latin translation, but I think that maxim could be qualified to say something like, “Repetition of a clear and consistent message is the mother of learning.”  Vague, inconsistent, or contradictory messages lead to ambivalence, indifference, or rejection.

This is no less true when it comes to your customers, the messages you want to communicate to them, and the actions you want them to take as a result of those messages.  One of the secrets of successful sales is grasping the fact that sales resistance is not always due to outright rejection; sometimes it is a result of a lack of clarity.  I’ll state the obvious here:  If your various marketing and communications channels and messages are inconsistent, vague, or contradictory, the result will be that your customers will receive confusing, mixed, or contradictory messages.  Don’t look for high conversion rates in such a case.

It is essential that you are clear about who you are, what you do, what you sell, what your customers should buy from you and why.  A unified front is a must in your branding, imaging, selling – across all marketing channels – TV, radio, web, print, logo, vehicles, clothing, uniforms, billboards, signage, on-hold, in-store and in your company mission, vision, and philosophy as understood and communicated by personnel.  This may be a simple idea to grasp conceptually.  Consistent application of it takes work.  The “bull’s-eye theory of marketing” says that for a given product or service, at any given time, a certain percentage of the potential marketplace will be not at all “in the market”, another group will be “in the market” (the “bull’s eye”) and the rest will be somewhere in between.  Depending on your industry and the list of products and or services you sell, any one customer or potential customer could be at several different stages simultaneously.  To further complicate things, research indicates that the average consumer needs to hear a message multiple times before it registers with them.  Therefore, you may need to master a fairly complex matrix comprised of different products and services as well as the seasonal relevance and an eye toward planning for future needs, all the while aiming toward the goal of keeping your consumer messaging clear, consistent, and relatively simple.  Such an undertaking may not be for the faint of heart, but it’s an ongoing reality every successful business must consistently confront.

Looking for hold music for your business phone?  You’re not alone.  For businesses looking to leverage “alternative marketing solutions” in a down economy hold music is a no-brainer weapon for the arsenal.  The use of less expensive promotional vehicles to augment or replace traditional advertising is on the increase even as Bloomberg.com reports that newspaper circulation declines steepened in recent months.  “The Economy” is not the only reason for this trend.  Today’s marketplace is seen as more sophisticated and skeptical, and less susceptible to the impact of traditional advertising media (at least as traditionally employed).  I.e., traditional marketing is not dead, but there are new players in the game, and a “mix” of marketing channels and approaches, likely, will always be the best approach.

Couple shrinking marketing budgets with a changing consumer mindset, and “guerrilla marketing” may be becoming mainstream.  At the same time on-hold music and messaging, which was once seen as sort of a “necessary evil”… where hapless callers were unceremoniously forced to listen to instrumental Muzak™ renditions of last year’s pop music hits, has morphed into a sophisticated and viable, albeit low-cost means of communicating with – and marketing to consumers.

If, however, you’re planning to simply slap some canned hold music on your business phone, your callers might have a somewhat anachronistic experience waiting in your on-hold loop.  That is, they might think they’ve time-warped back to the era of disco dancing, leisure suits, and avocado-green kitchen appliances.  While keeping up with the times merely for the sake of “hip-ness” may not be the most effective business strategy, there is, for many businesses very real, demonstrable value in the thoughtful use of on-hold messaging.  Consider the following script written and produced by Holdtime Studios for a new client as an example of how hold music can be employed to connect with customers, inform them of relevant developments with your business, and market products and services to them while they are in a “warm” state, having called you on the telephone.

(This is an on-hold script for Halton CAT, the CAT heavy equipment dealer for Oregon and Southwest Washington.  This is one paragraph out of seven or eight in a three to four minute production.  Picture broadcast quality sound, a pleasant, soft jazz music bed, and a warm and friendly male announcer…)

“A LOT OF THINGS GET OVERHAULED AROUND HERE – ENGINES, HYDRAULICS, HEAVY EQUIPMENT, AND OUR WEBSITE…  WE’VE STREAMLINED THINGS AND ADDED SOME NEW FEATURES.  JUST HEAD ON OVER TO HALTONCO.COM TO FIND THE PRICES YOU’VE BEEN WAITING FOR ON OUR HOME PAGE.  EVERY WEEK, WE PUT FOUR MACHINES FOR RENT OR FOR SALE BELOW MARKET PRICE.  CLICK ON THE SUMMER HEAT LINK, OR SIGN UP FOR OUR EMAIL BLAST TO FIND THE PRICES YOU’VE BEEN WAITING FOR AT HALTON TODAY.”

Call it “making lemonade from lemons” or call it “smart business”. Whatever you call it, you’d be well-served by giving appropriate valuation to the time spent on-hold by callers to your telephone system. Businesses pay substantial advertising dollars to “get the ear” of others. When a caller is on-hold with you, you have their ear. It’s a big mistake to underestimate the importance of this fact. This is particularly true in light of the prominent role telephone communications plays in contemporary culture.

The reality is that the telephone has become so much a part of our lives that it often seems like a virtual appendage of some people’s bodies. To emphasize the point, the next time you’re out and about driving around town, take note of how many other drivers you see who are talking on their cell phones. (You may want to hang up your own phone first before doing this, as you can only concentrate on so many things at a time.)

I remember a time when the thought of a day in the not too distant future when the average driver on the road would actually have a pocket-sized wireless telephone with them in the car would sound like something straight out of a science fiction movie. I think most of us back then, upon hearing such a notion, would envision people trying to drive while holding some typical telephone of the time such as a big, clunky desk phone. (I actually worked with a fellow who did exactly that in the early 1980’s when I was a radio traffic reporter. One of the veteran reporters somehow had a real, sure ‘nough, working “car phone”, i.e., a desk phone attached to a radio transmitter in his trunk! The rest of us had to transmit our traffic reports to “base” via conventional 2-way radios, but this exalted one actually called in his reports over his car phone. Mind blowing! How he ever came to be in possession of, what for the time was such absolutely incredible technology, I never found out. Then there was the guy at my high school whose father was a millionaire and was reputed to have a wireless telephone installed in his Ferrari. I was sure he knew James Bond personally.) Even in those days there was a well-established, widespread love of and obsession with the telephone, but we had little idea of what was coming just around the corner.

My point is, we spend a lot of time on the telephone. Too much time, I would argue. In fact, I would go so far as to suggest that society as a whole might benefit if some folks had their cell phones surgically removed from the sides of their heads. (According to “statistics”, the average person spends 40 minutes per day/20 hours per month/10 days per year/2 years in a lifetime on the phone. The portion of that time spent on-hold is, reportedly, 17 minutes per day/8.6 hours per month/4.3 days per year/330 days in a lifetime.) At any rate, for people calling into your telephone system, whether they spend a portion of that call on-hold or not, their call to you is just one of many they will make that day. For most people, time spent on the telephone, on-hold or otherwise, is, arguably taken so much for granted that the typical person on a telephone call may be somewhat oblivious to the fact that they are communicating via telephonic technology. During the portion of a call in which they are on-hold their “in-the-moment quotient” is likely even lower. With the right approach, “on-hold” can be positive and productive – for your callers and for you, as well.

One of the advantages of hiring a company like Holdtime Studios to do your on-hold messaging is the convenience of having your on-hold messages downloaded into your on-hold player via the Internet. (There seems to be some confusion, generally, regarding what is meant by the terms “upload” and “download”. In this case, it would be more correct to say “uploaded”, since it’s a process of Holdtime sending the data (music/message recording) to your on-hold music player. From your perspective, however, it may feel more like a download.)

Why is this a benefit? Because it allows for easy, frequent updating of your on-hold music and message. If your perception of your “on-hold” loop (i.e. what people calling in to your telephone system hear when they are placed on hold) is “music on hold”, meaning primarily music and not spoken messages, the value here may not be immediately apparent. Sure, it’s nice to freshen up the on-hold music every once in a while, but there is something of far greater value that you are failing to take advantage of. The true value of this convenience becomes clearer when you consider just what you can do by utilizing your on-hold loop as an active, rather than a passive medium (think of having a car that you never drive but only use to sit in and listen to the radio!) Some examples:

• Tell customers about new products and services.
• Stimulate powerful emotional responses or paint word pictures through humor, entertaining trivia, personal stories, customer testimonials, company history, and more.
• Direct callers to your website, where they can potentially take care of many of the things they might have been calling you about including get driving directions or your mailing address, find out about your products and services, get additional news about your company, set, change, or cancel appointments, shop at your online store, communicate with you via email, live chat, etc., and on the list goes. All of this, of course, potentially saves you that much time when your customers take care of such business via your website instead of tying up your personnel on the telephone – and that’s a potential, secondary benefit of pro-actively using your on-hold music and messaging system.

So, there are two main points I hope to inspire you to think about:

1. Instead of “on-hold music”, think “on-hold message”.
2. Keep your on-hold message fresh, current, and informative.

By the way, if you stumbled upon this blog by doing a web search on “music on hold download”, or some similar phrase, you might be more in the “do-it-yourself” category, so you may or may not be interested in having Holdtime Studios take care of your on-hold messaging. Those for whom the phrase “music on hold download” means music beds they download for their on-hold music player can, of course, find lots of options for downloadable on-hold music online. For the rest, however, who are less comfortable with the idea of adding one more technological learning curve to their plate, not to mention the time and energy necessary to write, record, and produce custom on-hold messages once, let alone on an on-going, regular basis, a service such as Holdtime Studios is a perfect solution.

No matter how you slice it, there’s just no free lunch. Take the case of technology, for example. Modern, computer-based, digital technology in particular. I remember just short of a couple of decades ago when we all began to be sold like never before on the marvelous ways technology was going to improve our lives. Personal computers, cell phones, etc., were going to increase our efficiency so much that we’d all get our work done in half the time and have more time to enjoy life and the things that matter, such as friends and family. While it would be tough to deny that the list of things we can now do with computers, the internet, cell phones, pda’s, etc. is so long and so impressive that it would have sounded like sheer science fiction just a few years ago, the problem is that the more technological capabilities we have the more things we discover that we can do or think we need to do or want to do or to try to do with that technology. I am not aware of anyone talking about all the extra time they now have on their hands thanks to modern technology. If anything, it seems to be the opposite.

In today’s world of on-hold messaging there is a wide range of “telephone on hold music players” to add to your phone system. Thanks to all the new technology, no longer are you limited to either locking into an over-priced, poorly serviced, long-term contractual relationship with Muzak, or, playing your competitors’ radio ads into your phone system for the listening pleasure of your on-hold customers. The good news is that you have a lot more options to choose from. The downside? There’s a lot more information to wade through and homework to do to determine exactly what you want, how to hook it up to your phone system, how to use it, what the legal ramifications and issues are of playing music produced by someone else, and more. While there is no free lunch, there is a silver lining in that all of this has created a business niche that has been filled very effectively by companies like Holdtime Studios, where custom-written messages, broadcast quality fully licensed music beds, professional audio production, equipment selection and installation, and system and message updating and maintenance are all included in the service. The only downside that I can think of to this picture is that there is a fee involved, but the amount is so small that it’s not really much of a downside at all, especially in light of all of the benefits.

Your Music On Hold Player.

It’s a catch-22. Customers are your life-blood, and marketing is a primary tool for attracting customers, but in times of “fat-trimming” and “cost-cutting” the marketing budget often seems to be one of the easier places to cut back. Because marketing is not an obviously non-optional cost – such as payroll or the electricity bill – and because its “return on investment” is not always easy to quantify, it is sometimes perceived as “non-essential”. Consequently, many businesses make the mistake of eliminating marketing and advertising altogether during lean times. As a result, the door is left wide open for competitors to pick up market share. Even if they don’t, a business that is “out of sight” quickly becomes “out of mind”. When customers are in the market for your products or services, don’t expect them to think of you first, unless you’ve taken steps to ensure that they do so. How can you reduce your marketing expenses without turning off the spigot altogether? “Guerilla marketing”. Simple translation: Get creative. I.e., look for ways to continue to communicate with customers besides traditional, high-cost venues such as radio, television, print, or even direct-mail.

One of the easiest and cheapest guerilla marketing tools may already be hanging on the wall in your phone closet this very minute. That is, your music on hold player. “On hold marketing” has much to commend it. Connecting with the customers who are calling you right now may be one of the most cost-effective ways to maintain “top of mind awareness” – not only with the customers who are calling you today, but with your customers generally. Effective on hold messages can plant seeds that bear fruit in the future. The cost is a fraction of most other marketing channels, and the audience is warm and thinking about your company and your products or services. You’re not interrupting them or asking them to “change gears” to consider your message. Customers of Holdtime Studios typically pay less than five hundred dollars per year and receive regularly updated, custom written, professionally produced messages each season – i.e., several times a year. Customers calling you this season can be targeted with ideas and information that translates into action next season. Holdtime customers have even been known to pick up “word of mouth” and referral business as customers tell other customers about messages they heard while “on hold”.

It’s a matter of keeping the momentum going. Or, as the old saying goes, “a bird in hand is worth two in the bush”.

Making Plans for Music On-Hold?
Remember: People do Business with People

The statement “people do business with people” is much more than a truism.  ‘Worth their salt” business people keep the truth expressed by these words ever in mind.  Consideration of the converse of this principle can be helpful as well:  “People don’t do business with… anything but other people.”  Or at least, not if they can help it.  Think about you own experience.  Haven’t you ever felt like exclaiming, “Thank God!  A real-live person…!” after an interminable and exasperating time of waiting and working your way through the auto-attendant or phone-tree of some “monster-mega” corporation, government agency, etc.  And, miracle of miracles, what about the elated relief that courses through you when the human on the other end of the line (A) speaks proper English (B) is reasonably well-educated (C) is knowledgeable and conversant regarding your reason for calling (D) has a positive and constructive attitude and doesn’t treat you like an annoying interruption.  I.e., they are ready, willing, and able to help you.  What a concept!

In your provisions for music on hold, messages on hold, etc., think of how you can make the most of your customers’ wait time with well-written scripts that have a “human touch” – so that when they come off hold your callers don’t feel as if they’ve just been rescued from some desert island.  Here’s a paragraph Holdtime Studios just submitted to their newest client, Boise Vision Care:

“Care… It’s in our name, and all we do.  Your call is ringing in today to Boise Vision Care.  We’ll keep your time on hold as brief as possible, and if you happen to be online, you can also connect with us at “BOISE VISION CARE DOT COM”.  Thanks for holding.  We’re wrapping up with our other patients right now to answer your call as quickly as possible.”

To some, it may just be that little box attached to your phone system, but to the more “nuanced”, their on-hold player holds music, messages, and a one-of-a-kind tool for communicating with customers.  The question is, are you communicating with your customers on-hold?

Here are three things to think about with regard to your on-hold messaging:

1.    Don’t assume you are automatically “communicating” with your customers on hold, just by having an on-hold system.
2.    Ask yourself what you are communicating.
3.    Think “dialogue” rather than “monologue” (conceptually, at least).

Too many businesses, I fear, use their on-hold loop as essentially a baby-sitter, that is, more or less the telecom equivalent of their office lobby.  I.e., it’s a place to dump customers until you can get to them.  Among other things, one problem with this approach is it shows or at least implies disrespect for customers – a backwards attitude which seems to say that you are doing them a favor by giving them the privilege of doing business with you.  If that is your thinking, may I suggest that you consider the wise words of Hobbes, Calvin’s sage companion in the comic strip Calvin and Hobbes, who once remarked, “One of us needs to stick his head in a bucket of ice water.”

Your customers are not children, nor are they “profit units”.  What do your customers hear while in your on-hold loop…?  Too often, it’s something like “Your call is important to us, and will be answered in the order in which it was received…”  For the record, one call does not an “order” make.  Apart from what may be seen by some as grammatical trivialities, the answer to the question of how well you communicate with your customers while they are on hold depends on how we define “communication”.  Despite living in the “information age”, with its steady stream of “new and improved” communications technologies, it seems that, as a society, we are drifting away from true communication.  The reasons for this are complex, but I’d like to at least encourage awareness of this trend and, hopefully, inspire some conscious resistance to it among businesses who seek to prosper through really communicating with, connecting with, and serving their customers.

In a required “Principles of Mass Communication” lecture class in college I once stood to my feet and challenged what I felt was the professor’s overly simplistic definition of “communication”, which was, “…the transmission of a message from a sender (“A”) to a receiver (“B”).  This definition was illustrated by a simple line drawing of two squares labeled “A” and “B”, respectively, with an arrow (the “message”) in between the two squares, and pointing at “B”.  While such a spare illustration may serve for purely utilitarian purposes, when it comes to the message itself – and the reason “A” is sending it in the first place – I believe a broader perspective merits consideration.  Simply put, if “B” has little or no idea of what “A” is actually trying to say – i.e. “A”s intended message, I, for one, don’t think “A” has truly communicated with “B”.  In such instances the arrow in the middle might just as well be labeled “noise”.  My professor told me I had a good point to which he would later return.  I sat back down at my desk, and waited.

Call it nitpicking, but I would suggest that communication involves more than merely sending a message.  True communication, as I see it, does not happen until the intended audience not only receives but also understands the message, at least to some minimal extent.  Granted, from a purely technical standpoint, the distinction is merely semantic, and my prof was perfectly correct in his definition.    Rather than quibbling over semantics, however, perhaps, with regard to communicating with your customers on hold, the smartest thing would be to talk to them and find out what their experience is in your on-hold loop.  They could be a source of constructive feedback and help you communicate more effectively, provide a higher level of service, and, potentially, improve your bottom line.  Having an actual conversation with them while they are on hold would obviously be, by definition, unfeasible, but if you have an “out of sight, out of mind” attitude with regard to your on-hold loop, you might not be making the best use of this resource.

Holdtime Studios must be doing something right, as their clients’ customers have actually been known to request that they be put back on hold so they can hear the rest of the on-hold message.  As for defining “communication” an alternative to my college professor’s definition which is also simple, but I think, for current purposes, rather more serviceable, is the word “connection”.

By the way, my professor never did return to my point.

As a general rule, the smaller the business, the greater the number of hats management needs to wear. There’s administration, legal, operations, production, fulfillment, customer service, website, internet and computer systems, telecom, tech-support, sales and marketing, just for starters. In the marketing category, there are the various marketing channels – print, radio, tv, web, etc. Oh, yes, there’s also your on-hold music and messaging. Or does that come under telecom? So many things to think about!

If you’ve been putting off adding on-hold messaging – or upgrading your existing on-hold messaging – because you think it’s too “technical”, hopefully this post will help encourage you to pull this project off the back burner and get it handled so you can check it off your to-do list. On-hold messaging is a low-cost, easily implemented, and surprisingly effective marketing channel that allows you to reach a warm market with targeted, timely messages. Don’t let the fear of the unknown keep you from taking advantage of this strategic tool.

Whether you’re considering hiring a professional service such as Holdtime Studios or supplying your own music and or message you’ll still need to add a little bit of equipment to your phone system. Holdtime Studios has a range of options in on-hold music and message players for whatever your application all of which are available at a surprisingly low cost. Alternatives you’ll purchase on your own also come in a range of affordable price points and are widely available. Either way, you should have no trouble finding an on-hold music or message player, regardless of your telephone system. Most of these players are fairly easy to install and easy to use. Lower end phone systems such as those sold at office supply stores may require a little bit of extra adaptation in the form, typically, of one or two small devices plugged “in-line” between the telephone and the player. Don’t let this intimidate you; probably the most “technical” thing you’ll do is read the directions and make sure you plug these little units into each other in the right sequence. I.e., you’re not doing any “wiring”, you’re just plugging things together like tinker toys. (Do they still make those?)

Then, of course, there is the issue of the actual music or message you play on your on-hold music player. Obviously, the more professionally it is produced, the better the image you will project to your customers. In addition to selling hold music/message players, Holdtime Studios provides their clients with a professional grade of audio recording, music, and production for their on-hold messages. What’s more, they also employ professional, creative writers to custom-craft each one of their on-hold scripts. If you assume such a service is outside your budget, you owe it to yourself to look into it before ruling it out. You just might be pleasantly surprised at how affordable – and cost-effective – it is to let Holdtime Studios wear this hat for you.

In this post we take a break from our considerations of the strategic application of music and message to look at the issue of your choice in an on-hold music and messaging provider.

Muzak has earned a dubious reputation over the years with both the public in general and, apparently, with some of their customers as well. The typical impression most people seem to have of “muzak” is “that insipid, vapid, annoying background sound in the air (regardless of whether or not Muzak actually produced it) on elevators, in restaurants, in hotel lobbies and doctors’ offices, and, while waiting interminably on-hold calling one’s favorite mega-corporation.” Rock music legend, Ted Nugent, was at one time reputed to have attempted to buy Muzak for $10 million “…just for the pleasure of erasing the tapes”.

Nowadays there are options in the world of on-hold music and messaging, however this may not yet be common knowledge. Could it be that Muzak took for granted the popular perception of their being the only game in town? In addition to being infamous for a product most people seem to think of as a joke, albeit the “only” joke, in February of this year Muzak made the news when it filed bankruptcy. Perhaps the apparent scarcity of competition led to a lack of motivation and consequently lax business management in various areas, such as customer service.

Holdtime Music has heard complaints of poor customer service and “vindictive five year contracts” more than once in discussions with local Muzak customers exploring their options. If on-hold music and messaging were “just muzak”, these issues might not warrant a second thought.
Given the potential, however, of on-hold technologies for reaching a warm market with fresh, targeted messages such neglect does not make good business sense. Muzak’s seemingly cavalier attitude has created a wide-open opportunity for competitors such as Holdtime, small though they may be, to pick up valuable market share through no-brainer strategies including realistic contracts, aggressive pricing, and customer-focused customer service. Add to that mix, thoughtful, well-written, custom on-hold productions, and the general public, not to mention Muzak, may soon be in for a paradigm shift.