If You HAVE To Put a Customer On Hold, Do it Right

Having a live representative answers all of your customers’ phone calls quickly is one of the best ways to ensure top-notch customer service, and it’s something many organizations are able to achieve with the right plan in place. Sometimes placing a caller on hold is unavoidable, though.

When you have to do it, do it right.

Get Permission, Then Proceed

Even if it’s something that has to happen, get your callers’ permission before you place them on hold. A live answer followed by a brief hold is a much better way to handle excess call volume than putting callers straight through to the muzak.

Your inbound call representatives should answer with a smile, then ask customers if it’s OK to put them on a brief hold if they have to transfer the call or tend to other phone lines. The same is true for transfers and pauses that happen later in the conversation.

Provide Useful Information

Special offers and available discounts can be great hold time fillers, if they actually provide value to your callers and don’t just seem like a sales pitch, but giving helpful information, free of charge is one of the best ways to keep your customers listening, engaged, and happy as possible during their hold times.

Answers to common questions, tips based on your company’s experience and expertise, and simply some fun facts are all better at keeping customers engaged than repeated invitations to visit your website or recorded apologies for the hold time.

Avoid Unnecessary Repetition

It’s important to keep holds as brief as possible, of course, and equally important to ensure your customers don’t have to hear the same hold messages and music repeated constantly during their wait. Alternating between messages and some properly formatted and calming music is great, just make sure the same loop doesn’t start over every minute.

You should be tracking your hold times for several reasons, one of which is to help ensure that you have on-hold loops that are longer than most customers spend on hold. They’ll be far more receptive to the representative they speak to when they’ve been kept engaged with fresh information and messaging.

Brought to you From Acena, a professional answering service provider.