How To Drive A Caller Crazy Without Doing Anything

“You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feeling”

You know the feeling. We’ve all been there.

You’ve got 5 minutes, and you just want a simple answer to a simple question — but as soon as the company you’ve called picks up the phone:

“Please hold.”

Silence.

You start listening for evidence that you’re actually on hold — that you haven’t been accidentally disconnected by an inept or inexperienced receptionist on the other end. Is that static you hear? A “room sound” of silence, or a dead connection? As the seconds pass and become minutes, your mood starts to noticeably sour.

"Good things come to those who wait, dear!"

You have things to do, doggone it. You look at the clock on your computer, glance at your calendar, poke around in your email.

Now you seriously wonder if you’ve been disconnected. And if you have, that means you’ve lost your place in line. You’ll have to call back, and some other guy has called in the meantime and HE’S on hold, and now you’re behind HIM.

You wonder if you should hang up and call back. But what if you’re still on hold? Then you’ll be giving up your place in line just becase you didn’t wait ONE MORE SECOND.

You hear your mother saying, “Good things come to those who wait,” and that just sours your mood even more. Now you have to choose whether to ignore your mother’s advice. But she’s a saint. You’re not. Maybe that’s why you’re so miserable.

Now your mood is REALLY sour. You look at the clock again. It’s time to go.

“Hello, thanks for waiting, can I help you?”

Did you know?: New England Multimedia started out as an on-hold marketing company called “Soundtrax Unlimited,” with little more than a 4-track recorder, keyboard, guitar, bass, and microphone. Scott literally picked up the Yellow Pages and began cold-calling every business in the book to offer our telephone on-hold message services; at one point, he was the voice of nearly every Auto Body Shop in Rhode Island! Back in those days, he’d hook up a standard CD player to a business’s phone system to get them up and running. Script-writing, voiceovers, and all-original music with quarterly updates kept them coming back, and that’s how we paid the bills while Scott built New England Multimedia into a multimedia business offering website development, on-hold marketing, video production and more.



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Michelle handles all Social Media for New England Multimedia. You can contact her by email, on our Facebook, or on our Twitter.