“Serve” Your Customer with Pleasant, Productive Hold Time
~ This was posted on - June 27, 2009
We all know what it’s like to be on the customer side and receive poor customer service, or to have to deal with the frustrations of long hold times, user-unfriendly phone trees, and annoying “Muzak” ™, only to be rewarded by rude, inept, seemingly apathetic “customer service” reps (let alone “Paul” from India who asks, “May I be knowing the reason you are calling today, Mr. Holdon?” …As my elderly mother, who seems to think that there is just one guy, who really is named “Paul”, who answers all customer service calls to India, says “I don’t like that man. I don’t have time for it! I don’t want to keep rebooting my computer. I don’t want to talk to him!”)
This response to a blog post entitled “Customer Servitude” articulates what many of us may be feeling…
“I fear true customer service is a thing of the past. Unfortunately we live in a world where technology over powers us, with that we loose the human connection, or once we get the human connection “we’re putting them out”. God forbid they have to communicate with someone, never mind trying to help someone. If you’re lucky, really lucky, you may just get someone who is cordial to you and willing to help. These people are few and far between who hold the true meaning of customer service.”
Regardless of the medium, every minute of contact between your customer and you is important. From perusing your website to walking into your physical location to picking up your brochure to calling you on the phone – and yes, to those seconds or minutes “waiting on hold” – each is an opportunity to help or hurt your customer’s impression of you.
Your decision to add “music on hold” to your phone system (or to improve the quality of your current on-hold music or message) is a good one. Whether your customer is calling to buy, to get information, to complain, or even to compliment, if you can’t answer their call immediately you should strive to ensure that their time on hold is pleasant and even productive – for both of you.