Music on hold is one of those things that many business owners don’t give a second thought to.  This is a mistake, as it can make a big difference in retaining callers, and can have a direct impact on sales.

First of all, having something playing to callers on hold means fewer hang-ups.  This is because if you have silence on hold, many people will think they’ve actually been disconnected, and they will hang up.  In fact, according to a USA Today study, about 60% of callers hearing silence will hang up after one minute, on average.  According to Voice Response, Inc., 34% of those callers will not call back.

Many people choose to play a CD or radio station as their hold music, which is certainly better than silence.  Be careful, though: these may be considered copyright infringement.  If you’re concerned about this, you should at a minimum play royalty-free music on hold.  This often comes with the on-hold equipment you purchase.  Phone systems from ESI (our preferred manufacturer) include 3 generic, prerecorded tracks.  There is nothing to set up if you’re going this route; music will play on hold from the get-go.  (More information on ESI phone systems here).

Better even than generic music on hold is a custom promotion on hold, which includes facts about your company or current specials, played over a music background.  The same USA Today study mentioned above also found that 85% of callers prefer to hear information while on hold versus other options (which roughly agreed with MaxiMarketing’s figure of 88%).  Some other findings:

• Customers left on hold without any background music felt that a 30-second on-hold call actually lasted 90 seconds. Furthermore, customers thought a 30-second on-hold call that used music on hold lasted only 15 seconds. [AT&T]
• Having an on-hold advertising system reduces call abandonment by almost 90%. [Better Business Marketing]
• 16-20% of the callers made a purchase based on an offer they heard from an on-hold advertisement. [MaxiMarketing]
• The average business executive spends 17 minutes a day on hold, or 68 hours a year. [USA Today]

A custom, professionally recorded on-hold advertisement will generally run you between $125 and $350, depending on which company you have record it and the length of the recording.  Avoid companies that have you pay a monthly or yearly licensing fee for on-hold music or advertising.  You should be able to pay the fee once and then use the on-hold recording for as  long as you want.

ESI phone systems have on-hold equipment built-in, not added on, something many phone system vendors charge extra for.  You can load custom on-hold recordings that will loop automatically.  As a bonus feature, ESI systems allow callers to dial off hold, useful if they already know the extension they want to reach.

There’s a feature offered on all ESI phone systems called Virtual Answer.  It’s so simple, but so useful, that it deserves it’s own mention.

I’m constantly on the phone.  With clients.  With vendors.  I’m in demand.  I might not get much done if I were constantly playing phone tag with people.  Thanks to Virtual Answer, phone tag is cut down dramatically.

Here’s how it works.  Say I am on a call, chatting away.  Another call comes in to my number via Call Waiting, and I can see from the Caller ID that it’s someone I’ve been waiting to talk to all day; however, I can’t quite get off my current call yet.  I press one button on my phone, and the second caller hears, “Hi, this is Stephen.  I see that you’re on the other line and I would like to talk to you.  Please wait just a minute and I’ll be with you shortly.”  This caller is then placed on hold.  The first caller has not been interrupted at all, and is completely oblivious to my second call or that I have put it on hold.

At this point, I can take a minute or so to wrap up my current call, and I can get to the second caller rather then him having to leave me a message.  Bam!  The vicious cycle of phone tag has ended.

I could also have given the caller an option to dial another extension, or go to my voicemail, if I so chose to record my Virtual Answer message that way.  There is also another type of Virtual Answer button (which can either be used instead of the first type mentioned, or as a second button in addition to it), in which instead of playing the recording and putting the caller on hold, it plays a message like, “Hi, this is Stephen.  I see that you’re on the other line and appreciate the call.  Please hold on while I transfer you to my assistant.”  The call is then automatically transferred to my assistant, who takes the call from there.

I’m not sure why no one else has this feature, but it’s amazingly useful, and I’m not sure what I would do without it.  It’s just another way in which ESI has shown innovation in its products.