Studies show that when patients call your office, keeping them on hold for more than 17 seconds makes them feel annoyed and impatient  You can lessen that annoyance by making sure that your staff members always let patients know why they are holding and how long it will be before someone gets back to them.

Offering patients’ the option of holding or hanging up and having their call returned within a brief, specified amount of time also helps relieve stress.

Best of all, keep hold periods short and give your patients something interesting to listen to while they wait by providing them with specially developed informative messages about services you provide. Otherwise, 60% of them will hang up if kept on hold longer than 2 minutes.

You can create specific messages that promote any service you offer and rotate them any way you like.  Using the time patients spend on hold to motivate and educate them can turn the annoyance of waiting into a positive experience and will help grow your practice as well.