36,000 missed opportunities, recovered
A couple of years ago the "988" Suicide & Crisis Lifeline decided to address a problem: too many people hanging up while on hold waiting for a counselor.
We all hate being put on hold. The dorky hold music, the apathetic machine voice droning, "Your call is important to us, please continue to hold.”
Yep, that's what they had. You can hear it yourself if you like (link below). I listened, and I figure I'd probably hang up too.
So what did they do?
They began a concerted effort to improve the hold experience: surveying folks to help pick the best music; hiring a professional voice actor; carefully rewriting and revising their script; live A/B testing to measure whether it would make a difference at all.
The result? The number of people who hang up during the hold-time has decreased by about 36,000 callers per year.
Full disclosure, that's only a small percentage of the total hang-up number. But it's 36-thousand people.
What can we learn here?
When people call 988, there's one very clear next step that we want them to take in the journey. It is to stay on the line and connect to someone who cares, who can help.
The staff at 988 knew what the next step was in the journey.
They identified a problem that was preventing people from taking that next step.
And with relatively little effort, they found a way to help 36,000 people make progress in that journey.
Here's the thing:
When you know what the next step is, and you start looking at where people are missing it, you're in a good position to come up with ways to help them over whatever hurdle they’re facing. Whether it’s your service receipients, your donors, even your staff.
The required effort may not be as much as you think.
But must stay focused on the journey, so you can see when folks are getting left behind — and help them move forward with you.
All the best,
A.
P.S. I heard about this on the RadioLab podcast episode, “Hold On.” You can listen to it here, including the remarkably annoying “before” hold experience.