Minding Your Own Brand - Can I Put You On Hold?

By Dave Lubelczyk

I was put on hold the other day and as I waited for my customer service representative. I was treated to some lovely hold music as well as a message about the company which I had called. This message told me about their latest innovative products as well as how much they valued me as a customer. The message went on to describe how they were committed to customer service and encourage customer comments in order to improve their products and services.

I laughed as I listened because have been a customer of this company for a long time and I know that they provide some of the worst customer service, never want to make any changes to accommodate the customer, and their competition have been offering the same "innovative products" for a number of years. When the customer rep finally came on the line, I asked him about the disconnect between the message and reality. He said that he “didn’t make the message; it was the owner’s idea.” I offered to talk to the owner about this dilemma, but the sales rep informed me it would do no good because “he’ll do it his way no matter what.” So much for valuing customer’s opinions.

This small business is not the only company that fails to consider how their hold message will affect the customer on the end of the line. Everyday, companies are annoying and potentially losing customers due to the conflicting messages they are providing to the people on hold.

A great example of this is a company which was having a large number of reliability problems with one of their new products. This issue caused a high volume of calls to tech support. The company had recently added a promotional message to the hold system, talking about their new products and how reliable they were. Needless to say, this only enraged their already frustrated customers who were now reminded how “wonderful” their broken product was, two to three times during a hold session. By the time the tech support rep got on the phone, the customers were ten times more enraged then they were at the beginning of the call.

By now you may be saying, “My company is okay because we use a local radio station as hold music.” Well, this can cause a loss in customers even faster. I was on hold one day with my car dealer waiting to schedule a brake job. As I waited on hold for what seem like an eternity, I heard a radio ad for another garage complete with a phone number. So I hung up, dialed the number and got an appointment right away. They are now my car mechanics.

When developing a long-term branding strategy, it is necessary for organizations to examine all aspects of their business. They must consider that everything they say and do is communicating a brand message and therefore must be taken into account. So when a company asks, “Can I put you on hold?” they should also ask themselves “Will the customer be there when we pick back up?”

Dave Lubelczyk is president of IMAGEidentity, LTD which helps organizations achieve success by building advocacy through brand development and organizational development. He can be reached by phone: 508-259-9016 or at http://www.imageidentity.com

Archives of Minding Your Own Brand articles are available at http://www.mindingyourownbrand.com

© 2005 Dave Lubelczyk, All rights reserved.

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