Hold messages have a bad rep in some quarters. When you listen to the worst examples of music on hold, you can see why.

Sound quality. Music choice. Voice choice. All of these things can make or break an on-hold experience. But something that’s sometimes overlooked is the script. And more specifically, clichés.

In this post, we’re looking at how an overused phrase with good intentions can actually have the wrong effect.

Heard that before?

Clichés are the phrases we know and often hate. They’re the phrases that run a fine line between functional (everybody understands them) and irritating (nobody wants to hear them).

Clichés started out as great phrases that turned hackneyed when everybody started using them. They fast become cheesy, too. Like bad jokes, the worst clichés make you groan and wince.

And if you think of being on hold – of all the times you’ve ever tapped your foot to some anonymous lounge jazz – you’ll be able think of one in particular:

Your call is important to us.

Are you sure it is?

See, the company you’re calling is passionate about customer service. They want to reassure you and keep your business. After all, that’s why they’ve installed hold messages to start with: your call IS important. But because the company’s heard so many hold messages before – and because they think it’s the done thing – they’ll request that their script says:

Your call’s important to us.

And you think, hearing that cliché, that cheese; a phrase that’s well-intentioned but kind of hollow, Well, it can’t be that important.

So at PH Audio, our scriptwriters have found better ways to say it.

Sounding sincere is crucial

You know when you apologise to someone, and they want actions, not words? It’s the same on hold. A company can say sorry all they like, but if you’re waiting on hold for twenty minutes, it’s probably not an apology you want – it’s an operator.

That’s why it’s a good idea to avoid the cheese. Take out the fluff and the stuff your callers have heard a million times over from a million other companies.

Instead of making a call a negative experience, make it a positive one. Tell your callers what you can do for them. Speak to your callers in a way they’ll appreciate. Talk to your callers about things you know will benefit them.

In clichéd terms, add more value to the time your callers are on hold. That way, they’ll know their call really is important.

PH Audio features in this week’s Print Week Magazine. Christian Peacock, sales and marketing director at Blackburns of Bolton, tells Print Week’s Deputy Features Editor Philip Chadwick about how OHM is an important marketing tool for the print industry.

Read the full article here

An extreme, but relevant point

The psychology of torture identifies repetition as a method of afflicting suffering. Let’s not go into the details because we’re heading on to a downer, but suffice it to say, repetition is not endearing. We’ll call it audioboarding. Most people are familiar with this particular method of audioboarding, a favourite on car journeys worldwide:

“Are we nearly there yet? Are we nearly there yet? Are we nearly there yet? Are we nearly there yet? Are we nearly there yet? Are we nearly there yet? Are we nearly there yet?”

Annoying isn’t it? Isn’t it? Isn’t it? Sorry. The repetition of the above question reflects the passenger’s desire to be distracted from the monotony of the journey, rather than the need to know exactly what time they’ll reach their destination.

Why it’s a bad idea to say ‘please hold’

You’ve probably worked out this analogy in the making, and yes, it’s exactly the same when callers are placed on hold. If a person is on hold, they’ve already committed to waiting, though at this early stage no one can be sure exactly how long they’ll be willing to wait. That all depends on what happens next. Asking a caller to ‘please hold’ over and over is pretty self-defeating. The longer a caller waits, the more they’ll hear ‘please hold’ and the more likely they’ll be to drop the call.

Driven to distraction

Back to our analogous car journey. The driver has acknowledged their passenger’s boredom and begins to think about what might distract them. After all, the driver can’t physically shorten the journey, but they can reduce it psychologically. So, the driver tells the passenger all the great things about the destination, things the passenger hadn’t even thought of. Now the passenger has forgotten all about the journey and is massively enthused. What’s more, time has flown and they have arrived!

On-hold messages with a purpose

Instead of reminding callers that they’re waiting on hold, tell them all about your business and give them a reason to stay on the line, or an alternative like visiting your website or sending an email. On-hold messages don’t have to be totally straight either; a bit of humour and silliness is great if it suits the business.

The point is, keeping callers waiting isn’t ideal, but sometimes it’s unavoidable. A better way to say ‘please hold’ doesn’t say it at all. It informs, entertains and distracts.

At PH Audio we’re in the business of making music and voiceovers that fit a company’s image and brand. Sounding right for callers is critical and has lasting effects. I found an interesting piece of writing on ‘creative synaesthesia’ which brings me nicely onto this post: creatively, how does a company develop an on-hold marketing production or create an audio brand that fits with their branding?

Artificial synaesthesia for audio branding – an overlapping of senses

Synaesthesia is a condition in which one type of stimulation evokes the sensation of another. For example, you might see colours when you hear a particular sound.

But ‘artificial synaesthesia’, as it’s coined in the article I’ve linked to above, can help businesses to understand how consumers perceive brands. By artificially recreating and understanding how people take meaning from a particular word or sound, it’s then easier to create the most effective combinations of voiceovers, content, style and music. Ultimately, you want to be able to positively reinforce brand values in the mind of the consumer.

The fact is, artificial synaesthesia is in us all – when we’re ‘being creative’ we often have to put a relative visual to a piece of music (or vice-versa). Or, in the case of making a film / video, you’ll often accompany images with an appropriate piece of music to set the scene for the audience. The same can therefore be applied to on-hold marketing, and more so with audio branding.

A feedback quote from Lizzie on the creative synaesthesia article reads: “I like the theory that in ancient times the natural way of things was for our senses to overlap … and that modern worlds have progressively dumped constraints on us and made us section things off in compartments”.

This is extremely relevant when we’re talking about the creation of an audio brand; the point being that an audio brand needs to represent the visual brand audibly. In turn, this reinforces the values attached to the brand in the consumer’s senses; sound and vision working together.

Why is sound important for your brand?

Sound is easily recognisable and repeated. We’ve touched on how you can instantly recognise the visual brand of a company when you hear a jingle and this is relevant again here. Memorable audio branding helps us to pick a product or service out of the cluster, builds trust and loyalty, sets a mood and strengthens a visual brand. Of course, a brand says something about us as consumers; it defines us and as much as we may not like it, segments us into marketable groups. Having a memorable audio brand makes it easier to build a connection between the brand and the consumer.

Final thoughts

What colour is sound? That’s subjective, but there is a degree of science behind the theory of sound having colour. Have a look at this video on the colour of sound.

By interpreting visualisations audibly, we can begin to develop an audio brand that is recognisable, memorable and sustainable. The best audio brands will last in the minds of the consumer forever, so when putting together your audio brand, think about how you could use creative artificial synaesthesia and how your customers will perceive the way your business sounds. What will they think of and how will those thoughts positively reinforce their views of your brand and company?

Further reading on synaesthesia…

http://www.bbc.co.uk/search/synesthesia
http://www.wishfulthinking.co.uk/2006/11/20/creative-synaesthesia-if-you-see-what-im-saying/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synesthesia#Grapheme_.E2.86.92_color_synesthesia

Companies spend a lot on symbols. On symbols that people associate with their name.

It’s kind of reductive, but in the simplest terms, advertising is about making an effective symbol that carries a full brand message. That’s why the Nike ‘Swoosh’ logo equals athletics. Equals running. Equals gold medals. Equals you running faster.

Advertising is about making a large concept into a picture. Reducing sentences and paragraphs into lines and squiggles.

It’s been about that for hundreds of years. About graphic identities carrying brands.

Now, of course, we’re producing much more than logos. We’ve got the internet, for one – we’ve got the viral videos and the microsites; the discussions across social media and becoming a company’s fan on Facebook. Now, businesses are creating fully branded ‘user experiences’.

But in the last century, we also got ways to produce better sounds, and faster. We have studios and microphones. And as this medium has grown and gone digital, so too have the agencies (we’re one!) who specialise almost exclusively in audio branding – not graphic-based branding. And on commercial radio, telly, the internet, businesses are using these agencies to compete for the most memorable sound.

With these developments – these new ways to reach an audience – there’s been a scramble. A scramble to see what business should sound like. A sound to define a brand.

Critical Noise – an excellent blog of essays on every aspect of sound – calls this scramble a ‘skirmish to package every experience with sound, from corporate messaging to personal ringtones.’

You’ll recognise some of these packages. There’s the Intel sonic logo, the Asda jingle, even the Coca-Cola adverts that herald the start of Christmas holidays.

But like anything that works, and seems to work well, the whole world has a go at it. That’s why for every plinky-plonky Nokia ringtone, there’s a Crazy Frog.

There’s a danger of information overload. Of too much noise, and not enough signal. You could even call it corporate noise pollution.

And now, just as Critical Noise goes on to point out, when you throw sound into the advertising mix, you’ve got to be wary of deafening your audience.

That’s why knowing when to be quiet, and knowing when to speak up, is critical.

On-hold – the right time to speak up

We all know being on hold isn’t ideal. In its worst format – silence or beeps – it exploits the kind of patience that few people have. The kind of patience that many are paying national rates for.

When people are on hold, or waiting to be transferred, they’re not really choosing to be. And that’s why your business can’t afford to make things worse.

It’s not the time for bad music, nor the time for meaningless platitudes about calls being important.

But it is an opportunity to deliver a message. To entertain and inform. It’s a chance to talk about something that’s relevant to your callers. It’s a chance to prove you really understand them. And by understanding exactly why people call your business, you’ll develop messaging on hold that caters to them. Their tastes. Their needs. Their reason for choosing your business over a competitor’s.

At PH Audio, we bang on a lot about the amount it costs to get a caller in the first place. Because if marketing is the distillation process, then this call is the fancy cocktail. That’s why you can’t go and mess it up.

On the phone, your business sounds like the call operator. Your brand sounds exactly like the silence or the beeps you’ve got on hold. There aren’t logos or videos or fancy slogans here – so if you’re going to play music on hold with on-hold messaging, you’ve got to do it properly if you want your brand to hold up.

In this case, signal is a lot more important than noise. Because, if silence says more elsewhere – elsewhere in this market of many, many noises and messages – on hold it says nothing.

Or, it says you don’t care.

Done right, on-hold messaging is a unique opportunity for a business. It doesn’t have to be another pile of noises to tune out from.

So how do you want your business to sound?

I’ve recently been spending time out in the field watching our Business Development Team sign up new clients – it’s truly fascinating, and I’m sure psychologists would have a field day in such an environment.

Watching how they interact, how they exchange information, and how our potential clients respond to their presentations, will never get boring. So with this post I’m sharing my personal observations, and questioning the notion: can a product really sell itself? Or indeed, are F2F meetings intrinsic to the sale and the building of successful supplier-client relationships?

In the meeting

I sit quietly and explain that I’m simply there to listen. That way I get a better chance to appraise and assess the situation.

Last week I watched Midlands-based Mandeep. The week before, Londoner Rob – both very different types of Audio Branding Sales Consultants with completely different styles. And, both hugely talented at what they do (helping potential clients realise how they’ll benefit from the PH experience).

PH’s customer service style is evident from the outset. Way before the potential client decides to partner with us, they get a taste of what it’s like to be our customer, and they’re given the chance to hear how their business could sound.

The appointments sometimes start off a little frosty – arms crossed, uncertainty, a touch of nervousness, sweat on the brow and a certain lack of awareness to what happens next. Nevertheless, our customers always seem to be good at calming our representatives down!  In all seriousness though, our meetings don’t take long to get into their stride, purely down to the consultants and how experienced they are in adapting to different situations.

The ability to instantaneously judge how to act, what to say and how to say it, is an innate skill that only the very best branding consultants possess. Our guys are fantastic at avoiding those fatal errors that can ruin a company’s reputation and always try to find the perfect solution for each individual business.

Customer profiling

The audio consultants have an incredible passion for finding out everything they need to know about the businesses they go to visit. Establishing an in-depth customer profile is key to the success of any audio branding campaign, so they begin with questions that instantly engage and arouse intrigue: How does your business sound? What generates your call traffic? How many calls per hour do you receive? If your business was a song, what would it be?

This is a great way to really get them to stop and think and realise just how powerful sound can be as an additional tool in a wider marketing strategy.

How we do it

Building value in the product isn’t difficult. ROI is key in the current climate, and with audio branding being a really cost effective marketing tool, the guys have very little difficulty in getting that across.  Audio branding benefits different industries and businesses in different ways, so we discuss marketing benefits and tangible ways the service has helped similar companies.

Without fail, every presentation I’ve seen has left the client impressed. It shows in their body language – facial expressions, the tapping of the toe as their bespoke audio sample is played, and the general head nodding as they realise how this marketing medium will benefit their business. As I said earlier – it’s fascinating.

To answer the question, can a product really sell itself? If it’s beneficial, original, captivating – sure. But what’s essential to the sale of our audio product, are the consultants who build trust and value in our business and services from the start.

Off up to Scotland this week to watch Jim, our man in the highlands. The Scots are always very receptive to our services, so it will certainly be an interesting trip.

Grant Reed

It’s 2010, which means it’s officially The Future. We’re all using jetpacks to get to work, using teleporters to go on city breaks, talking to family with our watches, that kind of thing.

Well, sort of. Google and Apple taking over the world besides, we’re not quite as advanced as our forefathers imagined. It’s easy to laugh at old science fiction stories, movies and games now we’re here, but some of them really did think we’d be in flying cars by now. Even Arthur C. Clarke, one of the most nerdy celebrated science fiction writers in the world, thought we’d be playing with gas monsters on Jupiter by next year.

So, in the spirit of predicting the future (and because it’s trendy to talk about the next decade), we thought we’d gather ideas about the way On-Hold Marketing might change and develop. Click ‘read more’ to see what we came up with.

The near future

Intelligent remote management systems

Soon, we’ll be launching a new on-hold player that allows us to load new productions onto client hardware remotely, at scheduled intervals, via the net. Web-controlled messaging means no more CDs, USB sticks or otherwise – and it’ll be simple because it’s remotely managed from our office, allowing playlists and music to be constantly updated.

Day parting

Day-parted messages are all about flexibility. So, if it’s 9AM when somebody calls, on-hold messages will say, ‘Good morning,’ and so on.  Eventually, clients will be able to manage what their callers hear before and after hours – with a different message for the day and another for the evening. Events and holidays would be covered similarly.

The not-so-distant future

On-hold video messaging

We’re already seeing rapid developments in the industry as telephone technologies grow closer to, and merge with, the internet. We reckon there’ll be a closer relationship between products like Google Wave, video and voice communications. In turn, this could mean that a kind of On-Hold Marketing shifts online if video conferencing becomes more widely used. Who knows: you might be able to SEE advertising while you wait…

The flipside is that more B2B and B2C communication is carried out live, via text, instead of on the phone. Companies like Dell already use live web chat to access and fix computers.

Targeted messaging

We also think that On-Hold Marketing, just like web marketing, will become increasingly personalised. So, you could ring a company, they could match your number to your name on their database, and when you’re put on hold, the messages you hear will reflect the services and products you haven’t used before.

The far-future

Your call, your choice

You’ve made the call to a company who doesn’t believe in music on hold with messages – so you get to decide what you want to listen to. It’d be a licensing nightmare for the company and the supplier, but you’d get your very own, hand-held pub jukebox. And if that sounds really far-fetched, don’t forget you can already get Spotify on your mobile!

Celebrity voice modelling

Call centre staff have their voices digitally altered into the voice of your favourite celebrity — alive or dead. You could be talking about your council tax bill with Arnold Schwarzenegger! And, when you’re placed on hold, Arnie’s waiting for you there, too.

Live on-hold messaging

Neural implants will play on-hold content to individuals at all moments of mental downtime: standing at bus stop, waiting for microwave oven, showering, scratching, etc. No boredom, only relentless information.

The Always-Factor

Phones might be unrecognisable in the future, but the value of a good-old sing-song is eternal. That’s why, whenever you’re asked to wait, scores of television talent show runners-up will be dispatched by orbiting satellites to sing on-hold songs to phone callers in person.

The ultimate on-hold technology

Voiceover artists will merge with playback equipment to become trans-human on-hold-borgs — the only people on Earth who can actually read this sentence aloud.

Have any ideas of your own? Share them with a comment below!

Be the master of your destiny

After planning your marketing approach for the year ahead, make sure you take the time to factor On-Hold Marketing into your strategy. OHM can help you reinforce important changes in your business calendar such as product launches, new services, special promotions and exciting company news, as well as support your marketing agenda.

If you have renewals included in your package, you can easily plan changes in to your production without any disruption to your existing message, which will continue to play on your system until the new production is ready to go live.

And if you don’t already have On-Hold Messaging, have you thought about how you will handle the surge of customer calls following a marketing campaign? After spending a great deal of time and money on raising the portfolio of your business, it wouldn’t be effective to place them on hold to silence or beeps — especially as 60% of customers faced with such an impersonal greeting will hang up in a matter of seconds.

Pocket pleasing marketing

On-Hold Marketing is a fantastic way to make a great first impression. Messages are bespoke to your business, they’re interesting and informative, and they’re a superb way to psychologically reduce hold time. And when you consider that 20% of callers make a purchasing decision based on the information they hear when they’re on hold, it’s one marketing approach you don’t want to miss out on.

Hang on (please)

We’re a patient bunch, us Brits. Along with fax machines, umbrellas and radar, we invented queuing.

We queue at Alton Towers. Queue at the post office. Queue for pints. Queue for burgers after too many pints. We’d queue for sleeping if somebody said it was the right and proper thing to do.

Waiting politely is a nationwide sport. To the rest of the world, we’re a country of hooligans, stag-doers, beer-drinkers and queue-ers. To rest of the world, we’re either battering each other, voicing baddies in Bond films, or standing quietly in a line.

But, according to new research by TalkTalk, there’s a problem with that stereotype.

As a country, we’re fast losing patience.

Patience: the last virtue

TalkTalk’s study – which aimed to look at how people’s expectations have changed since the growth of high-speed internet – found that it takes an average of just 8 minutes and 22 seconds to snap while we’re waiting.

That’s 502 seconds before we cross what they’re calling ‘the point of impatience’. On crossing this point, we apparently go bonkers, melt, flip out, or worse. Then, we start cancelling services, slam the phone down, shout at managers, stomp about and lob things at the wall.

And that’s just on average.

Apparently, all of these terrible things happen after 3 minutes 38 seconds waiting for a website that’s taking its time; 5 minutes and 6 seconds if the kettle hasn’t got its act together; and 10 minutes and 1 second waiting for mates to arrive.

If you’re waiting on the phone, complete thermo-nuclear meltdown takes as little as 5 minutes and 4 seconds.

So what can be done?

Well, there are ways to mediate any of these problems. That’s the ingenuity of marketing. So in the cinema, you’ll find quizzes up on the big screen before a film. They’re easy, sure, but they’re also a good way to show up relatives if you’re feeling like a smart-alec.

In the Doctor’s surgery, there’ll be a telly on the wall with tips for healthy living, reminders, and more.

At the dentist’s, there’s been a magazine with your name on it since time began.

And for telephones, there’s On-Hold Marketing.

The problem with leaving callers on hold and out of sorts

Part of the problem with waiting on hold is the music – or the lack of. Many companies use silence, or beeps, or lift music (which doesn’t count). For some, these noises can be mildly irritating. To a few, it’s an excuse to hang up and never bother again. You only need to take a quick scan for “on hold” using Twitter’s real-time search to see how waiting on hold throws up plenty of aggro.

But what’s the alternative? How can a company minimise the psychological effects of waiting on hold?

Professional On-Hold Marketing

On-Hold Marketing combines CD-quality music on hold with professionally written prompts, delivered by professional voiceover artists. It’s different to music on hold because it’s targeted – it’s bespoke to the company using it, and its uses range from informing customers about new deals which might benefit them, to entertaining them with light-hearted humour.

So, on-hold messaging can even provide a bit of comfort – a way to let your callers know you’re on your way, and that you’re sorry they’re having to wait.

That might sound a small mercy, but if you consider that more than 70% of callers are put on hold every day – and that of these, plenty will hang up if put through to silence – it’s innovative services like this that can sometimes mean the difference between an enquiry and a really bad mood.

Photo credit: Iostash @ Flickr

In the same way we now watch Blu-ray over Betamax, and listen to MP3s instead of cassettes, the technology for on-hold messaging has advanced greatly in the last ten years.

At PH Audio we’ve used a number of methods to deliver music on hold, and our use of audio technology is something we’re always looking to improve and develop. So, from CD players that jumped and warped, to digital playback with a lot of flexibility, in this post you’ll find our own rough audio technology timeline.

1998 – On-hold CD players

Our first on-hold systems were huge industrial playback units that played discs 24/7 (literally). Playback quality was excellent, but unfortunately this format meant productions were prone to jumping and stopping at the end of a message instead of looping. The CDs themselves also had a very short shelf life due to the discs warping after time.

2003 – MP3 on-hold players

In 2003, MP3 players were introduced as our new standard on-hold systems. These units were five times smaller than the existing CD players, and used removable media cards to play productions. This meant we could send new production more securely by post and now, by email. These players also had a greatly extended shelf life.

2005 – Remote download technology

In 2005 we introduced a new range of MP3 on-hold units with remote download technology. These units feature an internal hard drive, making it easy for the completed audio file to be downloaded remotely via the internet. This means we can update the message without involving the client in any way, shortening the time it takes to get a new on-hold marketing production live.

2009 – New innovations

After extensive field testing we’ve just launched our brand new unit. The unit isn’t a traditional playback unit; it’s actually more like a mini PC, which means enhanced flexibility and much more room to store a number of messages for day, out of hours messages and even seasonal changes. Like the players before, it offers remote access, and we continue to develop software which in the future will allow us to further develop the unit, meaning greater functionality will be available soon.

Future on-hold marketing – 2010 onwards

As the unit in use currently is software based we’ll soon be offering the following:

• Scheduled messages
• Times specific messages
• News feeds
• Live streaming

What do you feel would be a good feature for an music on-hold unit?