We’ve all heard them… and here’s what makes an on-hold production more annoying than helpful.

1. Paragraphs are too long… If your average caller is on-hold for 20 seconds, then why write paragraphs that take 30 seconds to read through? They’ll never hear the beginning and/or the end.
   1. Solution: Keep you paragraphs to 20 seconds or less.
2. Poor music choice… Let’s say you’re a finanicial planner, and use hard rock. Yet, most of your clientel doesn’t like hard rock. Your on-hold will do more harm than good.
   1. Solution: Aim for the lowest common denominator, usually light jazz.
3. Too much generic information… As in, “ABC company has provided the best customer service in our industry for since 1980.” Oh, please… you do more harm than good with that dreary pablum.
   1. Solution: Work industry statistics into good stories about your company. What do you tell people who want to know a little more about your company – this is your chance?
4. Micro-managing professional writers… To be honest, business owners who insist on writing their own on-hold messaging even when the service is part of the package are shooting themselves in the foot. Hold Time Studios will take the time to interview you, listen to your what your company is about, then use our experienced creative writers to come up with a script that will hit the target!
   1. Solution: Let the professionals do what they’re good at. You’ll always get the opportunity to approve it.
5. Use outdated information… Callers will immediately recognize if you’re advertising an event on hold that happened in the past.
   1. Solution: Change the production more frequently.

Get it right at www.holdtimemusic.com, or www.holdtimestudios.com!

Now that you’ve become familiar with Hold Time Studios for custom quality on-hold messaging, there’s no need to throw a scratchy radio on your phone system. Now you have the connections you need to avoid the following gaffes.

1. Having someone else advertise on your phone system

Printing Expressly For You (www.pefy.com) call me up one day… “We’ve always had a radio on hold, and yesterday one of my biggest customers was on the line. He said,

‘I was just put on hold and heard an advertisement for Documart. Isn’t that one of your competitors?’”

They were embarrassed, and decided it was worth the few hundred dollars to have a custom production done with THEIR name on it, and the best things about THEIR business… not the competitor down the street.

2. The signal drifts in and out, and half the time your calls are annoyed with static. Honestly… it happens all the time.

3. It’s not legal. http://articles.ruchie.com/entertainment/radio/legal-issues-on-music-on-hold.html Since it’s a rebroadcast of a copyrighted source that you’re using to promote your business… you owe somebody money.

4. You can do better. There are a number of on-hold custom production studios through out the US that can write a custom marketing piece specifically for your business, as Hold Time Studios has done for hundreds of companies. see www.holdtimestudios.com/marketing-ideas.php .

You may think that on-hold is for putting people to sleep, but that’s because you’ve never heard well written script. One of our more interesting clients is a second-hand gadget retail store – www.ilikestuff.com. Potential customers call stuff to get a valuation on their Xbox or Blackberry, and Stuff uses their on-hold to keep them waiting just a bit longer.

Warning: the following sample is not for everybody, but it works great for Stuff.

YOU MAY HAVE WONDERED HOW WE CAN TELL WHAT AN ITEM IS WORTH. A FEW YEARS AGO WE HIRED SOME READERS FROM THE PSYCHIC FRIENDS NETWORK, BUT THEY DIDN’T WORK OUT. WEREN’T TOO GOOD AT GUESSING PRICES. SO WE BOUGHT SOME BOOKS, AND YOU CAN SEE THEM WHEN YOU BRING YOUR STUFF IN. WE’RE HERE TO HELP- PLEASE REMAIN ON THE LINE.

What I’ve heard is that callers actually ask to get put BACK on hold to hear more the paragraphs! Now, that’s a great compliment.

Here’s another technique: Ask the question, then provide the answer in the next paragraph. Here’s www.golfscorecards.com, encouraging callers to re-order brochures.

REDESIGN PENALTY 1

WHAT’S THE PENALTY WHEN A PLAYER STRIKES ANOTHER PLAYER’S BALL ON THE GREEN IN STROKE PLAY? THE ANSWER IS COMING UP.

REDESIGN PENALTY 2

IF YOU PUTT INTO ANOTHER PLAYER’S BALL, IT’S A TWO STROKE PENALTY. WHAT’S THE PENALTY IF YOU WANT TO REDESIGN YOUR SCORE CARD WHEN YOU RE-ORDER? NOTHING – BECAUSE WE DO IT FREE. PLEASE LET US KNOW EXACTLY WHAT YOU WANT AS SOON AS WE RETURN TO THE LINE. THANKS FOR CALLING GOLF SCORE CARDS INC.

Read more good reasons at http://www.nfib.com/object/3654938.html, and hear it done the right way at www.holdtimestudios.com

Oh definitely. Most callers expect to hear “blah, blah… most professional…. Best customers service…. Blah blah… for over 50 years.” It’s positively uninspired, and frankly gives the music on hold industry a bad name. At Hold Time Studios, we’re digging all the time for good industry trivia to make the caller’s experience more informative. Here’s an example from www.christiansenelectric.com

USING THE RENEWABLE ENERGY OF THE WIND AND SUN HAS BEEN IN THE HEADLINES, BUT IT’S BIOMASS, LIKE PLANT MATERIAL AND WASTE, THAT SUPPLIES 15 TIMES MORE ENERGY THAT SOLAR AND WIND COMBINED THE UNITED STATES… SO, WHETHER YOU’R MAKING ELECTRICITY OR USING IT, CHRISTENSON ELECTRIC WILL HELP YOU IN JUST A MOMENT.

It’s solid, concrete info that will draw your caller in, forming a context for them to listen to new things about your company. We’ve found that using industry and historical trivia is most popular in these industries:

- Construction trades

- Dental

- Retail

- Veterinarian

- Hi-tech and software

Trivia is not popular with financial institutions, who work overtime to make sure their customers know how solid and secure they are. Hence the classical music with those guys…. hear lots of samples at www.holdtimestuiods.com.

Adding an on-hold messaging system gives you another way to talk to your existing customers, and new callers – and mentioning your website several times in the music on hold production will produce more web hits. Here’s how:

A few years ago we installed a new customer that sold restaurant equipment online and in a retail store www.rosesequipment.com. They’re website was very informative, and many of the questions people were calling about were actually answered on the website. Plus, Roses Equipment had carefully photographed nearly every item in their 100,000 square foot showroom, and they wanted their customers to see it!

Our sister company, www.holdtimemusic.com, writes in their literature, “You’ve got their ears on hold, why not get their eyes too? You know their sitting in front of a computer when they call you.” Roses’s asked us to heavily pitch their website with scripting like this:

“THANK YOU FOR CALLING ROSES EQUIPMENT AND SUPPLY. WE’RE GLAD YOU’VE CALLED TODAY, BUT IF YOU WANT TO SEE MORE PRODUCTS THAN YOU CAN REVIEW IN AN AFTERNOON, POINT YOUR BROWSER TO WWW.ROSESEQUPIPMENT.COM. THERE YOU’LL FIND PICTURES AND INFORMATION ON EVERYTHING WE CARRY, WE’LL BE RIGHT WITH YOU.”

The manager called me a few weeks later. From the day their telephone on-hold messaging system went live, they saw a 20% increase in their web hits. These hits are the most valuable – not some search engine or casually browsing surfer – but real customers who’ve already made the call and are actively engaged at learning more about their store. It’s a win-win for Roses and for the caller.

Most messaging-on-hold companies will promise a creative advertising experience with CD quality music when your customer is put on-hold. That’s not going to happen, folks. Here’s why: Audio productions are recorded in the studio at sampling rate of 44,000 samples per second, and while that is indeed CD quality, the best sampling rate your landline phone can playback is just 8,000 samples per second…AND LESS FOR CELL PHONE USERS. Here are some comparisons:

8khz: Telephone quality (300 - 3k hz)

11khz: AM radio

22khz: FM radio

44khz: CD quality

At Hold Time Studios, the productions sounds awesome in our voiceover room, but by the time it’s played back over a ¾” speakers on a phone line that is designed for less-than AM radio quality – we’d say put your time and energy in to what’s being said about your company.. It’s not about the music, it’s about what your saying.

Occasionally we’ll put in sound FX to create an audio picture, but in the case of www.powellvet.com, they have to very clean. Barking dogs are great sound FX for veterinarians, but for messaging-on-hold, let’s keep it to one dog otherwise it sounds like static. For the rave workout music we use for www.nelsonsnautilus.com, we’ll pick music that is less-busy or it will only sound like a rushing waterfall by the time it gets to your customers ear.

Bottom line: Whether your telephone system is a Nortel, NEC, Avaya, or Lucent: the onhold messaging quality your customer gets will be no better than AM radio. Musical nuances will not come through – so use this creative advertising channel to focus on what you want your customer to learn about your company through messaging-on-hold.

Hold Time Music and Marketing started as an idea in a business research class, and then – armed with a graduate degree in Music and an M.B.A., we’ve found our way into hundreds of phone systems around the country – almost exclusively by referrals. We’re very proud of our company, and grateful for our clients.