Team Partners Telecommunications

Your call is important to us...

Posted on Jun 19, 2025

The phrase ‘hold music’ may more immediately conjure up fond memories of moments spent in the arms of (at least temporarily) loved ones as a favourite album played on repeat in the background…but sadly that’s not what it refers to in telecoms-speak. Think instead of those interminable wasted minutes as you wait on the end of a phone line to ask a question that, face to face, should be answered in moments…and what you have to listen to in the interim. That’s ‘hold music’, and apparently there’s a whole area of psychology dedicated to it.

Before diving into the benefits of one tune over another, if a tune there has to be, what’s the point? As a customer the answer is obvious. I want to ask that question, get an answer and end the call. As a business, the answer is similarly obvious, we want to answer that question immediately and fully and allow you to move on with your day, thinking we’re wonderful. But we can’t do that because…and here’s where the slide begins…we can’t do that because we’re not efficient enough to take your call immediately, patch you through to the person you need to talk to, who has the information available to answer your query, set you right and enable you to ring off, just like that. We may have a wonderful product, but the customer’s assessment of that product and the likelihood of their buying it, or from you, again, depends on how far down that slide the customer travels as they sit interminably, wasting those precious minutes.

The question is, how does a business best mitigate the marketing nightmare that every call exposes them to? Is it by calling the customer back when they’ve come to the top of the queue? Is it by listing several options depending on the nature of the call?  Or by trying to turn things around by making the wait more of a positive experience?

The basic statistics are perhaps surprising.Apparently up to 70% of commercial calls result in being put on hold, with the average wait time across all sectors estimated to be 38 seconds. Again, an average, but patience appears to run out after about two minutes, with callers hanging up at that point, those with the option not ringing back, so it’s clear that, as mentioned above unacceptable hold times do the business concerned no favours.

So, what can be done? What’s the remedy?

To some extent the answer will be determined by the circumstances surrounding the call and the business’s desired outcome. A doctor’s surgery may use the opportunity of a recorded message to tell the caller about opening times or repeat prescriptions or simply to inform that the caller is 27^th in the queue and that they can either wait or dial 1 and be called back, and patients will invariably be OK with this compromise. For a caller being given a list of half a dozen options and even then, having to wait, the reaction will probably be different.

All of which brings us back to hold music, the philosophy behind which, being that if callers have to wait at all, then music can act as a mood soother and time absorber, and the time can also be used to impart sales or information messages to the caller. It works, callers report that music can mitigate their annoyance at having to wait, but there are strings attached! Here are some suggestions:

• Show an awareness of your likely ‘audience’ when choosing your music. No-one likes muzak, most of us will put up with a ’60s or ‘70s favourite.
• Change the tune regularly. The same old, same old, shows you don’t care.
• Check the quality of the playback.
• If possible, let the caller know their position in the queue every 30 seconds or so.
• Keep your recorded message fresh, with news about your business or new products.
• Introduce a caller only quiz, answerable on your website and with a small prize. Change this weekly.
• Offer a discount code…

The idea with all of these is to detract from the pain of having to wait and the negative impact on the reputation of your business that the wait can bring with you. Used cleverly, ‘hold’ time can actually be turned to a benefit, so long as you keep it under two minutes!