We've all had the experience. You call a business, and are greeted with one of two things, either someone picks up the phone immediately, or you are sent to a pre-recorded message either asking you to leave a voice mail, or to hold. As a business owner, you should look at the on-hold message as a place to serve your customers, and to improve your own sales. By having a professional and informative holding message or voice mail greeting, you are going to help improve both customer satisfaction, and your own sales.

There are several things that need to be avoided no matter what when it comes time for you to establish an audio greeting or recording for your phone system. By all means, you must avoid cheesy or annoying hold music. More hang ups on a pre-recorded message are due to this than any other single factor. You should also try to avoid hard selling the customer through your hold messages. The on hold message is a perfectly legitimate medium to inform your customers about upcoming sales or promotions, but a hard sell approach will again, increase your hang up rate, which is what we are trying to avoid.

You can instead utilize your hold or voice mail message as a forum to inform customers about you and your company. Tell them about an upcoming customer appreciation day, or let them know about the special that you will be offering them this month. While you have a customer on your line, or your message has them on the line, they are listening directly to any message you choose to supply them with, so you need to take advantage of that. It is also a great place to offer free tips, ideas, and suggestions in relation to whatever area of business you work in. Customers always appreciate anything that improves their experience, and a satisfied customer, is a return customer.

From a sales perspective, every phone call is a potential lead. You can never afford to waste leads, which is something almost everyone in sales is well aware of. By using a finely crafted hold message that was recorded by a professional voice over artist, you are giving yourself a chance to retain more leads and convert more sales than any of your competition that use a pre-recorded, non personal message, or a computer voiced message, or painful hold music, all of which will increase hang ups dramatically.

Voice mail messages and hold messages are a fantastic tool, because they are just offering you another way to reinforce your brand. By hiring a professional voice over actor to do the recording of your messages, you can ensure that you find a voice that is going to help reinforce the images that you want your brand to be associated with.

There are certain sales truths which are universal,and to which the concepts surrounding on hold messages are derived from. A branded identity is extremely important for a successful company, so any chance to reinforce your brands identity, and brand recognition, is something that should be seized on because it will ultimately help increase your sales. Use your on hold message as another tool to increase both your customer service, and to reinforce the identity of your brand.