Melissa Thompson’s recent article points out that customers will stay on hold longer if there is music playing than if there’s only silence while they wait. However, for reasons provided in Thompson’s article, companies often use boring elevator music instead of popular songs. This may seem trivial at first, but hold music factors into the big picture of the customer experience. Thompson recommends improving the hold experience by keeping the volume at a reasonable level, injecting facts and news throughout the music, allowing customers to skip songs or the music altogether, changing up the music every now and then, and opting for classical music over elevator music.
The Little Things Go a Long Way in Customer Service
Nobody likes waiting on hold, but it’s often a necessary evil. There are times when call volume is too high and some call centers don’t have the scalability to handle every call right away. However, that doesn’t mean that customers won’t view their wait on hold as a part of their overall customer experience. Every detail of the customer journey plays a role in overall experience satisfaction, including things that seem small on the surface like hold music.
While customers may be more likely to wait longer on hold if there’s music over silence, they will take mental note if the music is boring, repetitive, or a nuisance. The big goal should be to reduce hold times, but while hold times are still a reality it’s important to mix up the music and make it more entertaining and pleasing to the ear. The recommendations discussed in Thompson’s article are a great starting point and can help check one aspect of the customer journey off the list for improvements. Once you’ve improved your hold music, there are a variety of other small details that can help increase customer engagement and boost the customer experience.
This blog post is based on an article from CustomerThink. To read the original article, please click the link below:
Your Call is Important to Us, So Please Continue to Listen to This Horrible Music – Melissa Thompson
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