Put yourself on hold at your own business today. Ring the main number, ask to be held, and listen to what your customers hear.
If the answer is silence, or a beep every few seconds, you are losing calls you never hear about – and those calls are the warmest leads you get, because the person already picked up the phone.
What happens in the first minute
Callers held in silence commonly hang up within about 40 seconds. Callers who hear something – a message, music, information – stay on the line significantly longer, often three times as long.
The reason is simple. Silence sounds like a fault. People wonder whether they have been cut off, so they hang up and either ring back (annoying) or ring your competitor (expensive). Even a plain "thanks for holding, we will be with you shortly" every twenty seconds fixes most of that, because it confirms the line is alive.
Hold time itself is also perceived, not measured. Research on waiting consistently finds people underestimate a wait filled with content and overestimate one filled with silence. The same 90 seconds feels shorter when something is happening.
The bit most businesses miss: it is selling time
Hold time is the only advertising slot where the audience has actively chosen to be there, has their attention on you, and cannot skip it. That is worth using well.
Good hold messaging typically covers:
- Services people do not know you offer. Almost every business has one. The plumber who also does hot water replacements, the accountant who does SMSF work, the cafe that does office catering.
- Answers to the questions that eat your staff's time. Opening hours, parking, whether you take a particular health fund, what to bring to an appointment.
- Trust builders. How long you have been operating, your awards, your Google rating, the fact you are Australian-owned.
- Practical directions. "Press 2 to be transferred to accounts", "you can book online at…".
- Seasonal messages. Christmas trading hours, a promotion, a new location.
Keep each message to 20 to 30 seconds, alternate with music, and write it the way you speak. A script that sounds like a corporate brochure does not land in a regional Australian business, and everyone can hear it.
Getting the production right
Three things separate hold messaging that works from the kind that makes people hang up faster:
- Professional voice. A staff member recording on a mobile sounds like exactly that. A trained voice artist, recorded in a studio, costs less than people expect.
- Licensed music. Playing a commercial radio station down the phone line is a licensing problem, and it also means your callers hear your competitor's ads. Licensed production music avoids both.
- Correct audio format. Phone lines carry a narrow frequency range. Audio mastered for a phone system sounds clear; a music file dropped straight in sounds muddy.
One-off or unlimited changes?
There are two ways to buy hold messaging.
One-off production gets you a set of messages, professionally recorded and loaded onto your phone system. Best for businesses whose offering rarely changes. The downside is that it goes out of date, and by the second year callers may be hearing about last year's promotion.
Unlimited changes is a monthly package where you can update the messages as often as you like. New service, new hours, a special, a change of staff – you send the words and the new recording is produced and loaded. For businesses with seasonal trade or regular promotions, this is the one that actually gets used.
Bold on Hold
Bold on Hold is Bold Media Group's messages on hold service. We write the scripts with you, record with professional Australian voice artists, licence the music, master it properly for phone systems, and load it onto your system for you. Both one-off and unlimited-change packages are available, and it works with modern cloud phone systems as well as older on-premise gear.
If you have a phone system, you already have the ad space – it is just currently playing silence. Get in touch and we will put together a sample script for your business so you can hear the difference before you commit.