On-Hold Advice: What the Doctor Ordered
You’re calling to hear the result of that lab test you’ve been lying awake worrying about. Or to schedule an appointment for your wailing sick baby.
After hearing “please hold,” you might spend the next few minutes listening to Muzak, or to a cheery message that “your call is important to us,” or to dead silence.
Robert Loeb has a built a national business by offering an alternative. His Vericom Corp., based in Alpharetta, Ga., sells specialized messages for health care providers that give callers on hold health tips and other potentially useful information.
“We think consumers are in a completely different frame of mind when they’re placed on hold at a hospital,” Loeb said. “You’re nervous, anxious or scared to death, and what you want is resolution.”
Being left on hold can worsen anxiety or lead to what the business communication world calls “abandonment”--hanging up. Neither is good for your health or your health care provider’s business.
“Historically, health care facilities have put people on hold for a long time, and I think it’s going to get worse,” Loeb said. “We try to convert that problem into an opportunity, to offer information that has value.”
A 20-year veteran of health care sales and administration, Loeb was seeking a way to start a new business in 1989 when he noticed an innovative kind of marketing being used in other fields: on-hold messaging. He figured selling products or singing the praises of a doctor or hospital wasn’t the right approach for his industry.
“When you’re anxious and on hold, you don’t want to be hyped. And you might start thinking they left you there to sell you something,” he explained.
He bought a $20 cassette recorder, closed his bedroom door and made a tape with messages about depression, recognizing teenage drug use, suicide prevention and other mental health issues. He took it to a neighbor who worked for a psychiatric hospital, and soon, he had his first customer and a new company.
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Initially running what he called “Business on Hold” out of his home, Loeb built Vericom into a multimillion-dollar venture with about 500 clients in 45 states. Two registered nurses study medical journals to develop and verify the customized “SoundCare” messages, recorded in a studio in this Atlanta suburb. Clients pay a minimum of $3,400 for a year’s worth of messages, which change monthly.
A caller to a pediatrician might hear tips on bicycle safety or first aid for poisons, an obstetrician’s office might play nutrition tips for pregnancy, and a hospital’s messages could include advice for women on back exercises to fight osteoporosis or for men to reduce salt, spices and caffeine to ease symptoms of prostate enlargement.
Some messages end with a “call to action,” such as suggesting an exam or consultation.
“We see ourselves as making a difference by educating the consumers and we also know that administrators are looking for ways to turn the calls into revenue,” Loeb said.
He said one urban public hospital that pays about $8,000 to $10,000 for the service handles about 36 million phone calls a year. It is now giving callers useful information instead of dead air or radio stations that might play a competitor’s commercial.
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In New Mexico, Lovelace Health Systems uses the tapes for its hospital, primary-care centers and other medical offices. Before, the 19 facilities had no standardized message.
“This is far better for a health care organization,” said Lovelace spokeswoman Anne Monson. “We are able to share health messages, direct them to doctors, or tell them something like this is flu shot clinic month.”
A Lovelace survey after the on-hold messages had been in use for three months indicated the vast majority of callers had fair to positive reactions. About 10% were unsure and 9% disliked them, although Monson said “what they really don’t like is being on hold.”
Loeb, 48, now has 12 full-time employees and five part-time workers for a business he said grew by 34% last year. His company also produces “HealthCasts,” in which hospital chiefs or physicians record their own on-hold messages, and a “ParentLine” that allows people to call and press numbers for recorded information on a range of health topics.
He’s mulling whether to seek external investors or to expand services to compete in fields besides health care.
“My agenda is to make a difference, which sounds altruistic,” he said with a smile, “and to make a lot of money doing it.”
