I am responsibe for updating upper management on our hotel brand standards and I ran across one. After informing them of it, the implimented it. Now we have some questions.
Our brand standards says “hold” is a slang word and we should say “wait” instead.
So now instead of say “Hold Please” on the phone we say “Please wait.” Not “May I place you on hold” but “May I ask you to wait”
Wait sound like it is rude to me.
Any other opinions
I think that “Hold Please” sounds more official, actually. It sounds kind of British and upper-class.
I dunno, I would fine “Please wait” pretty unsettling. I think “Hold” is standard telephone etiquette. I don’t fint it pretentious at all. On the other hand, “Wait” DOES sound pretentious.
Where I work, we usually say something like this:
Customer: Is Mr. Bla bla there?
Phone answerer person: I’ll check. One moment please.
I, personally, am more inclined to say something like, “I’ll check, hold on please.”
Um, that’s “hold” as in “hold the line”, which I’ve never understood to be slang.
Markxxx, where is your hotel chain from? If it’s the UK, it’s impossible to say “hold” is slang. Even BT and the BBC use it as a matter of course.
I would be kind of unsettled to hear someone say, “Please wait” or “Could you wait a moment” when I call. I’d be thinking, “Wait for what? Is there something wrong with the phone?”
I wouldn’t consider “hold” to be at all slang-y. “Ya wanna hold for a minute,” yes, that’s slang. “Could you please hold on,” or “Could I put you on hold for moment,” is not slang.
They both sound fine to me, but … what kind of company finds it necessary to micromanage every word the employees say? It sounds like there’s an executive somewhere who really needs a hobby.
matt_mcl wrote:
“Hold the line! Nobody gets through! Nobody!”
– Jeffrey Sinclair, at the Battle of the Line in the Earth-Minbari war