Turn the Music On, and Hold the Phone!

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.