Hanging on the telephone

From Australian Doctor, 29 February 2008:
Dodgy music, out-of-date information and unanswered phones are all ways to aggravate your patients when they call — but it doesn’t have to be like that.
HELL is hold music that is a tinny, expressionless facsimile of a once-beloved tune, mangled beyond belief and painful to listen to. Unfortunately, this musical travesty is still inflicted by businesses on captive customers whose only crime has been to ring when lines are busy.
For general practices this hold ‘music’ can be a patient’s first impression of the practice —Mozart sounding like it’s being played by a one-fingered, heavily sedated pianist.
“It’s a window on your practice,” says Dr Lynton Hudson, a GP in Warwick, Queensland, and chairman of the RACGP’s national expert committee on standards.
Like any good shop window, a practice’s phone message should give potential customers a sense of the practice and inform them about its services, its people and its requirements. Read more.