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)"

Comments

I'd suggest downtempo electronica / acid jazz

[Laxitive]

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

Why put on hold at all?

[gehrehmee]

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.

Re:Why put on hold at all?

[mcowger]

An interesting variant of that for people who dont do well punching a phone number into a computer is the following (which I know that at least one company, SpectraLogic, does).

You call the support line, and you wait on hold a max of about 1 minute. A real human answers the phone, and he/she takes your name, number, brief problem description (this is a tech support line) down and you hang up. The issue is assigned to arep, who calls you back when they are ready. Its like the OP's system, but you get to talk to a real person, and hear an ETA, or give them 2 contacts numbers, etc, because a human answers. Works really well for me.

Re:Variety

[Flexagon]

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:

• Raymond Scott, say, Powerhouse.
• Teletypes, like an old newsroom.
• A scripted, busy call center with crazy discussions going on. You and a few cohorts could do this yourselves, avoiding licensing issues, and making it a tongue-in-cheek version of your company's business. Your company would have to have the right culture for this.
• A news feed.
• The Jeopardy final question theme, if your call answering statistics are good enough.
• Sound effects: waves crashing, coffee percolating, someone typing very rapidly (so the caller sounds busy to people in the neighboring cubes), cars racing.
• Tips of the day for your product or service.

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.

AMBIENT

[Feztaa]

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.

Re:Variety

[Mattcelt]

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

Live DJ

[Webmoth]

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.