I hate hold music

[Dead_Cat]

I work for a company that does a lot of business over the phone. Until fairly recently, our hold music was a classical CD on a loop (Delius, I think). Now it has been replaced with some awful, tinny electronic nonsense music - because, I believe, we didn’t want to pay the license fee. Fortunately, we have one of the shortest hold times in the industry, so I don’t think clients are too unhappy yet.

[JohnT]

@BigT

I don’t think most people hate hold music because they hate being on hold. It’s because it’s always bad music. It’s the type of music you play in elevators and such. But, at least there, it’s not something you have to actually listen to. But that’s what you have to do while you wait on the phone.

I’d suggest they make better music, but, given the reminders about checking their website: they try to make it unpleasant, so that, if you don’t really need to call, you’ll hang up. I’ve heard stories of intentionally adding wait time just to discourage people from calling.

When I’m listening to horrible hold music, I dwell, fondly, on this likelihood:

There’s a guy out there. Wanted to be a composer so bad he could taste it. Studied music, going into serious debt for the academy. John Williams was his idol, and, starry-eyed, he set out for Hollywood.

And crashed. And burned. He just wasn’t very good… his melodies were trite, his transitions clunky, his choice of instrumentation was odd. And it wasn’t like he was trying for the avant garde crowd - he wanted to be James Horner, but he’s realizing he may be lucky to score a documentary, or a soap opera pilot on a new cable station.

Now he is consigned to writing hold music, barely living between insane LA housing costs and crushing student debt. That’s his life, that’s his future, that’s all he was and will ever be- the guy who writes crappy hold music.

So while I am miserable listening to that crap, I console myself with the knowledge that I am not the poor sad sack who had to write it!

[Nawth_Chucka]

The company I work for has terrible hold music. Just awful. I hear it plenty when I have to call other departments on behalf of whomever has called me - until I get a human. That’s b/c I can ask them to put me on a ‘soft hold’, which is merely them pushing their mute button to have privacy while they do a thing that doesn’t require my input for a few minutes.
The main reason I suggest people serve themselves on the website is it’s the most up to date computer system in the company. What we headset jockeys have…pretty slow. And we don’t know from day to day what programs or forms from state DMVs will work right.

[monstro]

I always dance when I’m forced to listen to hold music. Especially that crazy Cisco hold music. It could be the most awful music in the world, but dancing to it always convinces my mind that it’s not THAT bad.

[Nava]

@AHunter3

Most annoying reoccurring on-hold music patterns:

*) Decent music per se but recording quality is incredibly crappy like a radio tuned to a faraway station during a thunderstorm. Tinny treble with distortion static.

*) Decent music per se but interrupted every 25 seconds with really! fucking! loud! announcement that you should “please be patient, your call is very important to us, unlike your eardrums, someone will be with you momentarily”

*) Decent music per se but interrupted every minute or so with really! fucking! loud! advertisements for movies, video games, self-immolation suicide kits, etc

*) “All of our underpaid peons are busy with more important people. If you wish to continue to hold please press 1 now, otherwise we’re disconnecting your ass and forcing you to start over”. Every couple minutes. Seriously!?

*) Very short loop, like 15 seconds, with the tune being interrupted awkwardly in midphrase and restarting

*) I’m almost positive that I can identify Apple Computer as the culprit on this one: “You can select your choice of on-hold music. Press 1 for pop, 2 for easy listening, 3 for classical, or 4 for plain silence”. {presses 4} ==> onhold music proceeds to play pop songs anyhow

Calling your brother at work. Be put on hold. “Nice hold music you guys got.” “Glad you like it, it’s your CD!” “Which means you’re the person who’s going to eat it whole and raw if it’s not back in my hands before sundown; I assume you also have the other CDs I’ve been missing for three months. Now, I actually was calling about something else…”

@Kobal2

Yeah, I was recently on hold for two hours for IKEA, and they added a good, wonderful thing to their goddamn fucking irritating 10s hold music loop (for fuck’s sake, just put on the radio or an entire CD or something ! jingle loops turn your brain into pink mush !). Namely, every once in a while the robot voice would pipe up with “you are number X in the call queue”.
I wish more companies did that, since it lets you guesstimate how long you can put down the phone for.

It combines very nicely with the “speaker” button, too. I know I can put it on speaker and start doing other stuff; no risk that I’ll suddenly hear “hellothisisJoefromcustomerserviceshowmayIhelpyou?” when I’m up to my elbows in suds, if the nice machine lady said I was number 20 in the queue.

[BigT]

@AHunter3

Most annoying reoccurring on-hold music patterns: […]

*) “All of our underpaid peons are busy with more important people. If you wish to continue to hold please press 1 now, otherwise we’re disconnecting your ass and forcing you to start over”. Every couple minutes. Seriously!?

Missed your post the first time. It made me smile on a crappy day.

But I have to know: where did this happen? I can fully imagine having to press 1 to not be disconnected. But I think this place(s) should be named and shamed.

Though it is more evidence for the idea that they want to try and get rid of you.

[AHunter3]

@BigT

Missed your post the first time. It made me smile on a crappy day.

But I have to know: where did this happen? I can fully imagine having to press 1 to not be disconnected. But I think this place(s) should be named and shamed.

Though it is more evidence for the idea that they want to try and get rid of you.

Hmm… I think it was when I was researching dishwashers. We had picked several models we were considering and wanted to know where, in the physical world, a store would happen to have this exact model and/or that one on their floor so we could come stare at it up close & in person.

Given that, the culprit might have been Best Buy, or Whirlpool, or KitchenAid, don’t think it was Home Depot, umm some department store that has an appliance subsection, I dunno, lots of calls to central stores to speak to a human who could tell me which of their branch locations had this Bosch or that KitchenAid or this other Whirlpool etc etc. You’d perhaps think they’d have that feature on their web sites, you know, type in the make and model and hit enter and it displays regional locations that have it right now physically available, but no that doesn’t seem to have occurred to any of them.

Some were quite nice and had the “we’ll call YOU back when it’s your turn in line” feature, most had annoying on-hold music, but one had this reprehensible routine. Believe me, if I remembered who the offender was, I’d name them.

[I_Love_Me_Vol.I]

@Balance

I actually called back the next day with a different approach and figured out what was going on–instead of accounting, I asked for their PBX administrator. By that time, the story of the “haunted” call was already making the rounds, and they knew who to connect me to. Once I was talking to another phone guy, we worked out what happened:

The company that had issued my card got bought out, becoming a department of the larger company, then the people in it gradually got laid off or left on their own. As people left, the previous PBX admin had forwarded their numbers to whoever took over their duties…then when that person left, forwarded their numbers in turn. Eventually, the whole department was shuttered, and the number for the last person out got forwarded back to the general customer service number…which was programmed to call that department if someone called in and entered one of the legacy account numbers. And no one ever reassigned the old numbers or removed the forwards.

So, each time the helpful live persons transferred me to a number in the ghost department, the IVR forwarded me through every other number assigned to the department, and eventually back to the general line, where the whole thing started over, only with a couple dozen more links in the chain each time. It only ended when the IVR ran out of resources and had a nervous breakdown–it literally ran out of hold music.

The PBX guy found someone in accounting who could look up the old legacy records, switched the IVR to forward to them, and I called on another line to verify that it got me to someone who could close out the account. (He probably spent another couple of days going through the IVR and PBX, cleaning up the mess.)

What is PBX and IVR? I’m asking rhetorically because I’ve already looked them up. I’m not sure I should have to do that. It seems the onus would be on the writer to explain themselves clearly, and not make the reader have to research jargon.
ETA: Also, what is NHLP?

[Mr_Shine]

ETA: Also, what is NHLP?

New Helpful Live Person. This one is fine as it was spelled out. You’re completely right about PBX and IVR though. Spell out acronyms first, people!!!

[Nawth_Chucka]

@I_Love_Me_Vol.I

What is PBX and IVR? I’m asking rhetorically because I’ve already looked them up. I’m not sure I should have to do that. It seems the onus would be on the writer to explain themselves clearly, and not make the reader have to research jargon.
ETA: Also, what is NHLP?

For those who didn’t care to look them up -
IVR = Interactive Voice Response; ‘Press or say 1 now’.
PBX = Private Branch Exchange, an internal telephone network within a company.