What makes a good messages on hold script ? Your on hold script is the key to having a marketing tool that helps you achieve more of your goals. You’ve been stuck listening to hold messages that didn’t impress you, and didn’t help you. Maybe they even convinced you to hang up. The biggest problem with the average messages on hold script is that they’re so annoying! Here are a few ideas about scripts: the good and the bad.
Don’t put these in your messages on hold script
- Long messages that seem to go on forever: you never know how long a caller will be on hold. So short messages work better. For traditional phone systems, your messages will “loop” or continue to play all the time. You won’t know where in the “loop” the caller will start hearing the recording. So again, a series of short messages works best: if a caller hears the end of a message, pretty soon they’ll hear the beginning of the next one.
- More isn’t always better: if you have one really important message, then adding more and more to the production simply makes it less likely that your caller will hear the key idea.
- “We apologize for making you hold…” Recorded apologies don’t really impress anyone
- “We’re experiencing a higher than normal call volume…” I’ve heard this every time I call my Cable TV company for the past 5 years!
- “Your call is important to us, because without you, we wouldn’t even be here.” This is just silly.
- Jokes. One person’s humor are another’s “turn off”. Jokes are great, but usually don’t work on hold. And your callers don’t want humor, they want help.
- Phone numbers to call: no one is listening with a pen, ready to write it down. The same goes for addresses.
- Don’t start every message with the name of your company. Don’t start every sentence with “we”. Remember, your messages are about your callers, and their needs. They didn’t call to hear about you. But your messages on hold script can let them know how they can get the help they want!
- Bragging and complimenting yourself: “we’re the leader,” “we’re the #1…”, “our trained professionals are experts,” or “you can trust us…” No one really believes this stuff.
Here are ideas that will help
Think about your overall marketing plan (do you have one?). Your messages on hold script is a marketing tool that works with all your other marketing tactics: brochures, websites, advertising, in store advertising, pricing, etc.
- What’s most important to your caller? (Because your caller is most important to you)
- Be sure to plan your goals: what do you want to accomplish? If you don’t plan your goals, you can’t measure your results
- Hold messages should make hold time less annoying. So give callers more of what they want. You can’t force them to buy!
- Give helpful advice: part of marketing is building a relationship. We all want to buy from people who help us, not just people who want to sell something.
- What’s on your customers’ minds today? Do your customers needs change every year? Or every season? Or every month? Keep your messages current. There are easy and affordable ways to do this.
- How does your customer talk? Make sure your messages use the same language.
- Help your caller: if a caller hears sales message after sales message, you’ll alienate them. Include some helpful information in your messages on hold script.
Interesting, helpful messages can make hold time less annoying, more interesting, and help you to help your caller better. A good messages on hold script can appeal to both new and long time customers. When they’re well written, your new marketing tool can help you sell more on every call, and sound more professional.
Let’s get started on your script
So what do you want to accomplish with your marketing messages? Call for your free 15-minute strategy session, and we’ll talk about the messages that can help your business.