The BV Blog

I’ve always been a fan of old-school announcers, those fellas with the big voices who were staples of early radio and TV. In one segment of our current On Hold Messaging production we tip our hats to a specific type of announcer from days gone by - the educational film guy. The tribute comes complete with that familiar warped record sound in back of him. We also managed to poke a little fun at one of our own services. (Who said On Hold Messaging doesn’t grow on trees!) Take a listen.

I am always amazed when employees cannot summon the energy or common courtesy to use even the most basic manners when working with customers. And yes, I’m referring primarily to the those who work in the retail world. 

It seems the words “please” and “thank you” have gone the way of ”yowza” and “cotton gin,” as if they are no longer applicable in modern society. Well, I’m here to tell you those words DO matter. I wish I had a nickel for every time I dropped 50, 60 or 100 bucks in a store and was LITERALLY not spoken to after the transaction. Maybe it’s a problem that begins in the home, but any company that doesn’t insist its employees use at least the basics - hello, please, thank you - is missing countless opportunities to make positive, loyalty-building impressions. 

Want to separate your business from competitors? Improve your customers’ experience…one “thank you” at a time.

We have a client who prefers relatively long On Hold Messaging copy. Typically, we suggest keeping OHM messages shorter 1) so that callers will be more likely to hear the entire message, 2) because callers tend to retain the message longer if it’s presented succinctly, and 3) because callers can easily feel overwhelmed when presented with non-stop talking. (On Hold Messaging is meant to pique interest, not give all the details about a company, product or service.)

But even after offering these thoughts to our client, they still wanted to present a large amount of information - about 60 seconds worth in each message. So, we came up with the idea of using two voices to record each message. We divided each long section of copy into 3 or 4 parts, then revised the script slightly to present it more as a conversation between the two voices. Hardly a groundbreaking idea when you consider multiple voices are often used in radio and TV spots, but it’s not often done with straight OHM copy. Two voices also “break up” the long messages so they’re more interesting and appealing to the ear.

The bottom line: we found a way to make the content more palatable to the end user - the caller - and that will make our On Hold Messaging program even more effective for our client.