Common Blunders with “Please Hold” Messages

If your company’s in-bound calls are routed to a call-centre, check to see if your ‘please-hold’ recording includes any of these blunders:

“Due to overwheliming demand all our agents are busy…” This company is overwhelmed. Sounds like they’re out of control and don’t know what to do.

“Due to high call volumes…” I guess management wasn’t expecting many customers to call. Or they’re just incompetent at handling high demand.

“Your call is important to us…”They start the interaction by insulting our intelligence and lying. If our call was that important to them, they’d find a way to have someone pick up the phone.

Better to simply state, “Thank you for calling ABC Corp. Please remain on the line and you will be served faster than by redialing. Waiting time for the next available agent is approximately X minutes.” It’s to-the-point, informative and unlike the others, doesn’t add insult to the injury of being on-hold.