Hold the ads, please

David Reich at My 2 Cents wrote about ads that play while you’re on hold:

Wednesday’s Wall Street Journal tells the story. Callers to customer service, while waiting for the next available representative, are seen as a huge captive audience. More than 320 million calls a month and growing, says one of the companies that sells ads for play to on-hold callers.

The article says the company claims customers are particularly “susceptible” to marketing pitches while they’re on hold “because they are attentively waiting for someone to arrive on the other end of the line.” They know, though, that they need to be careful in choice of ads and length of ads, or “there is a danger of riling customers - or potential customers - by blitzing them with ads.”

…

But if I’m calling to order a product or to get help with a problem, the last thing I’ll want while waiting is to have ads thrown at me. I can understand promos for products of the company I’m calling, but if I’m calling for help with my new Dell computer, I’ll be damned if I want to hear an ad for Coke or Mazda or a credit card while I’m on hold.

Amen! The idea that every customer interaction is a selling opportunity is simply wrong. And this is a really bad one; people are often calling because they’ve got a problem, and that’s the last time that they want to think about buying more from you.

There’s also a simple practial factor; if I have to wait 15 minutes to talk to someone, I’d like to do something else during that time: answer email, catch up on blogs, anything at all. It’s easy to tune out the hold music. When it’s interrupted by something else every 15 seconds, it’s very hard, and the whole experience becomes more frustrating.

The most common and most annoying interruption: “Thank you for your patience! We value your business.”

No, you don’t. If you valued my business, you’d staff your call center appropriately so that I wasn’t waiting on hold for so long. The hold queue is a more powerful message than any recording.

It’s great to find opportunities to expand your relationship with your customers, but doing it when they are captives is not a good idea. And adding third-paty ads just increases the customer’s feeling that they are your victim. Don’t do it.

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