Keep Me on Hold
Illustration: Don Weller
Once upon a time, being left “on hold” — waiting interminably for a real voice to pick up the phone, was a mind-numbing experience. No more. A Park City-based company called Leave Me on Hold produces specific-to-the-business hold messages that entertain, delight and cajole. The audio skits are so good, in fact, that callers don’t want to hang up. Companies are finding that the right hold message not only keeps people on the line, but maximizes business.
“Fifty to 60 percent of all customers hang up in the first minute when placed on hold with either music or a person talking,” Leave Me on Hold owner Nate Dipalma says. “So our challenge was to find a solution that would keep customers on hold longer and create an opportunity [for the business] to upsell their products and services.”
Dipalma calls his hold messages “audio cinemas.” They can be absolutely anything — from a play to a musical to a soap opera to a movie — about the client. Each piece is custom-designed to help clients achieve whatever objectives they’d like to achieve during telephone wait time.”
Dipalma’s career hasn’t always been “on hold,” however. He is a former professional speed skater who moved to Park City eight years ago when the National Team relocated here from Milwaukie, Wisconsin. Dipalma hung up his skates two years ago to concentrate on his fledgling advertising business, Concept Marketing. A call from a client looking for the perfect “hold” message sent Concept Marketing into this offbeat line of production.
“We agreed to take the job as long as we could do anything we wanted to,” explains Dipalma, “and [the client] gave us a large enough budget to compensate us.”
In studying the industry to prepare the perfect on-hold message, Dipalma says he realized just how many companies offer only two options to clients with customers on hold: music or music with a person talking. “That’s pretty sad ... but we took the job, and came up with something completely different.”
These days, Leave Me on Hold is a stand-alone company employing a crew of about seven plus a network of independent contractors in offices near Jeremy Ranch. Leave Me on Hold has inked several big national contracts, but also has produced hold messages for local businesses such as Trout Bum, Park City Hardware, Brad’s Abbey Carpet and Best Western Landmark Inn.
It takes about two to four weeks to produce a message, Dipalma says, hastening to add that he once knocked out a hold message in 48 hours. (“That was a miracle,” he admits.)
Leave Me on Hold has grown 400 percent in the past two years, Dipalma says. Two years ago, Leave Me on Hold produced two pieces a month. Now it produces 60. DePalma used to do 60 percent of the production work, relying on a cadre of his own voices — the old lady, a little kid, an irksome miner — but now provides character voices for less than two percent of the work.
“I’m phasing myself out of the production,” he says, yet he can’t help occasionally to slip into the little old lady or the bratty next door neighbor kid persona when trying to make a point. “We really want to be big, and there’s no way we’re big if I’m doing all the voices. My time can be better spent.”
Dipalma says Leave Me on Hold’s client base stands at about 250, all in agreement that wait time can translate to additional sales. “Everyone that listens to an on-hold recording is in the company’s target audience. Because they called, the people on the phone are ready right then. They’re calling in to do business or to change an order.”
And that’s a message no business seeking to maximize profits can hang up on.
Ann Johnson moved to Jeremy Ranch from southern California nearly 14 years ago and never looked back. She is the producer of a business program for local NPR affiliate KPCW.
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