The #1 complaint about music on hold companies

A recent sales call to a small chocolatier (www.jacivas.com) illustrated two common complaints with music on hold companies; 1) Long term contracts, 2) Poor customers service. The innoviative marketing solution of onhold messaging should not be difficult…. Here are some pitfalls to avoid.

Long Term contracts:

Watch out Muzak subscribers – the standard is a five year contract with payment-in-full if you attempt to cancel it. Earglue – a three year contract. (Maybe this is why they just came out of bankruptcy and were recently purchased by a Canadian company.) You’ll have to sign these before any messaging on-hold equipment is installed… I mean, you won’t even know if you like it or not, and boom: five years. Oh, and it’s automatically renewing unless you inform them in writing a few months before your current contract expires.

Solution: We’ve designed Hold Time Studios to be an easy way to update your phone system with marketing ideas that work! When a contract is necessary, Hold Time Studios only does one-year subscriptions, with the option to renew. There is a cost to this. We don’t want to provide $700 in equipment, then have the customer cancel after a one year subscription – that’s a loss for us. In exchange a flexible subscription options, we may charge a modest set-up fee, or request that you purchase the messaging-on-hold playback equipment.

Hold Time Studios also provides a single buyout production, and equipment for purchase for an unchanging production. Most customers who use this option will return within a year to purchase another production.

We’ll take a look at the #2 complain in our next posting!