Hold music (or on-hold music) is the ability to play a soundtrack to customers to ease the pain of waiting to speak to a live call centre agent.
Let’s face it though, in a perfect world, not many people would get to hear your nice hold music as there wouldn’t be a delay in answering the call would there???
But the reality is delays to speak to an agent in the call centre or your office can and do happen on a regular basis.
Of course, as well as just playing while customers are waiting to be connected to an agent, hold music is also used for well, when customers are placed on hold typically while a call centre agent confirms some information (or checks their Social media, takes a drink of water etc.)
Why have hold music?
Given it is often despised by customers, why do businesses persist in having it?
The simple reason is that if it was just silent, it would be difficult for a customer to know if they were still actually connected and in a queue.
Oh, and it increases caller retention rate by 98%.
And according to the study by OnHold32, a mix of hold music and hold messaging was the best combination to retain calls and give the customer perception of being on hold for less time than they actually were.
What type of hold music should you play?
There are some arguments that you just know there is never going to be a winner and this is one of them.
Classical? Live Radio? Modern Rock?
There are pros and cons with all the different approaches.
My key advice though would be to stick to something that is relative to your brand.
If I was calling Australian Pensioners Insurance I wouldn’t expect to hear the latest ACDC album for example.
Where does call centre hold music come from?
For some call centres, it seems to come from a soundtrack that is still stuck in the 50s.
Or that dam elevator music.
Seriously though, the hold music file is normally uploaded to your call centre ACD although some more modern versions enable you to sync to online services.
There are also some systems that have a default track built-in.
Queue the annoying elevator music again which is a default for many office-based phone systems.
You do also need to be careful about copyright infringement so it’s important to make sure you get the right advice.
You can also get your on-hold music professionally recorded, have a radio feed (again make sure you have the right permissions) or you can provide a platform for your budding superstars and record your own.
Call Centre Hold Music for Australian Government call centres
Just an idea, but as Centrelink (Australia’s Government Benefits department) has an average wait time of around 30 minutes and a song goes for around 3 minutes, why not use the time to promote songs from up and coming talent in Australia and maybe throw in a few legends as well?
I’ll take 10% of all future earnings for that idea. Thanks.
Find a list of local suppliers who specialise in call centre hold music and messaging on the free CX Industry Directory >>>
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