You may have experienced this situation yourself – You called your doctor, but after waiting for more than thirty minutes or so, you are still stuck with that boring din of distorted notes. If you did not need help with a health issue, you could have put the phone down. Also, if you are a doctor, if your profession was not about saving lives, your callers will not tolerate this kind of treatment.
This issue calls for a strategic game plan. If you can get a hold of the right type of music for business, you can retain your customers. With entertaining hold music, you can make the customers’ wait more pleasant.
The rise of hold music
When telephone communication first started, waiting for calls to get connected was common. Instead of long customer support queues and busy telephone lines, the unavoidable part is getting the right connection.
Putting callers on hold is expected, but you have to keep people entertained while they are waiting. Otherwise, you can quickly lose them to your competitors.
Why does your business need hold music?
Hold music is crucial for one main reason – customer retention. According to Newsweek, statistics reveal that we spend 1.2 years being put on hold on the telephone; it seems like we are destined to wait for that long! Since it is almost inevitable never to be placed on hold, both the company and the caller needs to have pleasant waiting experience. Most callers are put on hold for more than one minute. There are various call holding techniques and different kinds of music for business that each company uses to avoid annoying the callers.
For companies that kept the line silent while the caller was on hold, more than half of the callers hung up even before the hold was over. Only a small portion of callers can hold the call for more than five minutes. There is an estimation that people can only hold the line between one to five minutes.
Companies that use music while they keep their callers on hold have reported lesser cases of callers hanging up. So, if businesses want to retain their callers, they need to use music while they make their customers wait. Also, it would help if the caller is made to wait for less time before the concerned person gets back to him.
How does hold music affect people?
Those who have tried listening to music can attest to the fact that it can affect one’s mood in many ways. Also, numerous studies are confirming the effect of music on people. About 85% of respondents in a survey conducted by the US National Library of Medicine in the National Institutes of Health expressed that they listen to music to get an emotional boost. Time magazine published that music can effectively decrease cortisol and other stress-related hormones.
Some sources agree that jazz music can make listeners feel relaxed. Rap music is found to aid in fighting depression. Metal music, on the other hand, is said to improve one’s sense of identity. If you want to be happy, listening to country music will do the trick. Lastly, classical music can make one feel relaxed and can even decrease crime rates.
The point is, music has different positive effects on different people. And if you maximize these effects to your advantage, you can make each call that your company receives more pleasant and less stressful. Ultimately, you can retain your current customers and even add more business clients to your list.
