Can you hold for a second?
You have a captive audience. It doesn't matter if you called them or they called you, but your most prized prospect the one you've been courting for months is waiting on the other line. What happens when you put him on hold? What does he hear?
Ask yourself this: "If you value this prospect (or customer), what value are you giving him while he's on hold?"
The answer is probably "none."
You can answer the question yourself. Just write down what personally bugs you about being put on hold.
I decided to call last week's expert, Andy Dinkin, president of Tegra Telephone Systems, and ask him if he has a formula for on-hold success. "A prospect or customer on hold is as captive an audience as you could hope to find," Dinkin said. "Make use of hold time to implement the three E's: educate, entertain and empower. Our on-hold customers are asked to take our Tegra Test. This test challenges the caller to examine the way communication is handled within his business. The 10 questions are stated in a professional, studio-quality voice, and set to up-tempo music. Many callers ask to be put back on hold just to hear the rest of the questions." Cool.
But beware. Here's how the process leads to failure (customers and prospects on hold who hate you by the time they talk to you). If you want to make them mad, just do this:
Play your phony commercial by a phony announcer with annoying music, or irritating "ask about our " crap. Stupid commercials and messages about your products are irritating. No one wants to hear it, especially on their time.
Play the radio. It's actually illegal, and your competitors may be advertising on your chosen station.
Tell me how important my call is while I sit there and stew. Then repeat the same dumb message every minute or so.
Have nothing on hold. At least let the caller know they have not been disconnected. And the biggest insult of them all:
Play stupid information that everyone already knows. Stupid pieces of information make the experience beyond irritating, and sometimes insulting. One example of "stupid" could be US Airways' bright idea of reminding their "most preferred travelers" people who travel everyday and pay outrageous prices for the privilege to get to the airport an hour early. Wow, I never knew that. Thanks for that brilliant piece of information. Wait, let me write that down. What idiot thought that one up?
Can you imagine that US Airways think-tank meeting? It probably went something like this: "Hey everyone got any ideas how we can tick off our best customers?" One genius says, "Hey, I've got an idea. When they call up, right after they push a bunch of numbers to get more recordings, let's tell them to get to the airport an hour early. That should do it." Another genius pipes up, "And keep repeating it and play our annoying music and never change it." Everyone screams in unison, "Yeah that should do it!"
What are they thinking?
Where's the value? The object is to never put people on hold, but if you do, at least value them and their time. Don't puke all over people with a phony professional announcer and tell me how much your firm "appreciates my business," and how important my call is. If my call is so important, why don't you just hire more people to answer the phone?
Another classic example of the 1990s' corporate mantra profits before people.
When you put people on hold, it's an opportunity. How are you capturing it? How are you taking advantage of it? How are you getting one person to tell another about your information on hold?
Jeffrey Gitomer is the author of "The Sales Bible," and "Customer Satisfaction is Worthless, Customer Loyalty is Priceless." President of North Carolina-based Buy Gitomer, he gives seminars, runs annual sales meetings, and conducts training programs on selling and customer service. He can be e-mailed at salesman@gitomer.com (mailto:salesman@gitomer.com)
