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Appropriate Music for Callers 'On Hold'?
RiBread asks: "I work at a startup, and as such wear many hats. Right now I'm trying to make sure our phone system is useful. One of everyone's biggest complaints is the cheesy music that plays when someone calls in and is put on hold. The stunning MIDI rendition of 'Home on the Range' they hear vies only with the ice cream truck and 'It's a Small World' for its ability to infuriate. I found out we can hook up a CD player to the phone system to alleviate this, but the real question is now: what do we want to play? What's the best 'on hold' music you've heard?
(comments with links to samples of music will be most appreciated)"
I heard Thelonious Monk while on hold for AT&T last week.
Sweetness.
Or just an mp3 CD player with a CDR full of mp3s. It's not like you're going to be updating the music library all that often anyway, why not save a couple hundred bucks? Heck, unless callers are regularly on hold for more than an hour, a plain old CD player and a CDR with a decent variety of music should be enough.
For a commercial music, you want to try to offend as few people as possible, while still playing interesting music that people won't mind listening to. Generally you want it to be instrumental, apolitical, and good.
You don't want to be playing The Clash or blaring Radiohead out to the world.
Downtempo electronica and acid jazz fit that bill perfectly. They have a certain amount of respectability because they generally sample jazz and mix it with electronic beats and modulations to produce very "chill out" music. It's not hard on the ears, it's not loud. It's quiet and relaxing, and still good. The nice thing is, there's a lot of it that is purely instrumental. No annoying vocals to deal with, so you have to neither risk alienating people with controversial vocals, nor dumb down vocals to the point where they are stupefyingly trite and banal.
For concrete suggestions, try the following:
Suzuki by Tosca
Bricolage by Amon Tobin
Another choice you have is to play straight up good Jazz. Put on some Coltrane or Miles Davis or Herbie Hancock or something. There's no fucking way anybody can be offended by that music. It's all instrumental, and it's all rock solid.
Jazz and jazz-based electronica seem to be a perfect fit for what you're looking for in terms of: apolitical, instrumental, and good.
-Laxitive
Use your competitors adverts. It means that there is an incentive to get people off those dumb arse holding queues.
For a long time, Apple used to play surf rock. Beach Boys, Ventures, etc. Definitely different; made waiting much nicer.
- The Amazina Llama
Start with an ETA every minute or so. There's nothing worse than "your call is important to us, we'll be with you shortly" every thirty seconds for tens of minutes.
After that, the minimalist in me says just play enough white noise to make it clear that the line isn't dead.
In this day and age, I'm really genuinely surprised at how common being on hold is. Let the customer input their phone number, leave a message, or whatever, and get the next available person to just call them. The customer doesn't have to hold a phone to their head for an hour. They don't have to tie up their phone line. They can listen to whatever music they want, watch TV, make food, or pretty much do whatever it was they were doing before they had to call you.
"You know, Hobbes, some days even my lucky rocketship underpants don't help" -- Calvin
You should play morse code training materials.
<morse code> di-dah
<Eisenhower era voice> "A"
di-dah "A"
di-dah "A"
dah-di-di-di "B"
dah-di-di-di "B"
dah-di-di-di "B"
Etc.
MM
--
By including this sig, the copyright holders of this work or collection unreservedly place it in the public domain.
And why stop at a fixed playlist? This has so many {exciting,absurd} possibilities. 1) Offer menu choices. 2) If you've got caller ID, remember the setting for that customer's next call. 3) Think of things that would work well on an open speakerphone that the caller's probably using in a cube.
As for selections, sure, you could go with generic popular music, but, particularly if there are selectable options, I'd try for more things at the absurd/fun/useful end of the scale, like:
That all said, nothing is more annoying, once there is interesting hold conent, than to have it interrupted every 15 seconds reminding the caller that "Your call is important to us, stay on the line to keep your position, blah, blah.". Say that at most once up-front and never again.
Find some AMBIENT music from any musician. I would personally recommend Aphex Twin's ambient works, but that's personal taste.
Remember, hold music is meant to just remind the caller that the line has not, in fact, gone dead and that they are still on the line. It should not be anything catchy or particularly enjoyable (because everybody has different tastes and there's no such thing as a song that every person will enjoy).
So just pick something ambient. Preferrably it'll be calming, with no beat.
Whatever you do, please god, don't play popular mainstream music.
While you are apologising for putting them on hold might be a good time to ask.
Having said that, if you are a tech company, how about the 6-CD set of the HitchHiker's Guide to the Galaxy (the BBC radio show version)? No ads, no swearing (apart from b*lg**m), and quite a high 'oh, I forgot about this funny bit' value if you dip in at random.
A pizza of radius z and thickness a has a volume of pi z z a
You're welcome to use my solo piano album, license-free. It is currently used at several other places as on-hold music, and some people actually ask to be put on hold to hear it from time to time!
There are twelve tracks, more than enough music to handle most on-hold situations without repitition.
All I ask is that you give me credit if anyone asks, and point them to my site. Oh, and please let me know if you use it - I like to know!
Email me privately if you want more information.
Mattcelt
I called Microsoft for help with Windows 2000 Pro once (paid support, mind you), and the wait time was around 2 hours. Their floor manager got on the line and took down my phone number, saying that I would stay in the queue, but they'd call me back rather than making me sit at the phone. I went and got lunch while I waited.
It was also good that they do that because 800 numbers charge the recipient (Microsoft) exorbitant rates (as high as $0.75/min), and their calling me back probably saved quite a bit of money, which could help lower the cost just a little next time they force me to upgrade...
Several years ago, I had occasion to call 3com's tech support. After wading thru several layers of menus, the last option was what kind of on-hold music I wanted to listen to. Something like "Press 1 for jazz, press 2 for classical, press 3 for country, etc."
The worst part about it was that the one time I get to choose my on-hold music, the wait time was less than a minute.
Give me my freedom, and I'll take care of my own security, thank you.
I don't know if they still do, but Symantec used to have a live DJ running the on-hold music, along with "traffic reports" saying how many people were on hold, and what the average wait time is.
Give me my freedom, and I'll take care of my own security, thank you.