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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)"
Classical music is good, but don't forget about copyrights. Although the music itself may be in the public domain the performance may not be.
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I heard Thelonious Monk while on hold for AT&T last week.
Sweetness.
Rage Against the Machine - Bullet in the Head.
It perfectly describes my attitude to being on hold.
...while I do real work. I didn't call to listen to music, it just serves as a reminder that you haven't hung up on me.
The purpose of call-hold music is to indicate that you have not hung up. So why not send soft beeps, once in a while, so that
(a) the exchange does not terminate the call thinking that there is no activity
(b) the listener doesnt get pissed off listening to some (great?) music played over a crap 3KHz bandwidth phone line
US is now divided as the "Red" and "blue" states. Red States = communist countries. Coincidence? I think not
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
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
The reason is because you can't get the copyright permission on the public performance of those 10,000 songs. Music on hold (MOH) is a public performance, and companies sell specially licensed collections for that purpose. It's similar to libraries of background music for radio and tv.
There were some particularly weird "things" on XMission (a local and awesome ISP)'s hold music
When I worked there, there were two songs that were the techs favorites. One of them was something like six minutes of dogs barking. The users really hated it, it really rubbed all of them the wrong way. Rubbed them the wrong way so much that you could always tell when it had just finished playing and someone had to sit through all of it. Even though there were thousands of songs in the playlist (mostly trance), this one got a lot of attention and was removed.
The song that people liked to hear the most was "C is for cookie" by the cookie monster. Wouldn't matter if they had just been sitting on hold for three days and the DSL line had surged out of control and killed both of their parents, anyone after listening to that was in a pretty happy mood by the time they got to you. I think that one is still on there.
My personal favorite Hold Music was what I put on when I worked at a little company in San Jose. 100% Christmas music, the Secretary said it shouldn't be done, it was October and all. But I said "But if we don't do it now, we won't catch them by suprise." It's really quite amazing how few people know how to change the hold music, even though it was powered by a normal cd player with a little wire running to the PBX
You asked about what on-hold music to use. I'm going to pretend you said, "Give me input on phone-related stuff for my company."
1) NEVER blame "unusual call volume" for hold times. God, that makes me sick. It's a sneaky way of saying "It's not our fault you're on hold." Yeah, it is.
2) When the caller has finished their business, NEVER ask "Is there anything else I can help you with blah blah blah?". "No." "Okay then, thank you for calling Ultrablather Systems Software Systems Incorporated." STFU and say goodbye like any normal polite person and let me get off the goddamn phone.
3) NEVER have a phone system that constantly reminds me every 30 seconds that your sorry I'm holding and blah blah blah. If you're not gonna have enough people to eliminate the wait, at least let me wait in peace.
4) If your phone system requires me to punch numbers in, you better be sure your system rewards my effort. Being asked for the info I just punched in makes me want punch in your face.
5) Make sure the hold music is QUIET.
6) Play Dixieland music, simply because nobody does. Added bonus: It uses banjos.
If you haven't heard of it check out the Asterisk PBX. It's GPL licensed and comes with ETA announcements built in
It supports VoIP (SIP protocol among others) and Analog phones, T1's, etc.
Check out the 2 port SIPura ATA to interface with 2 FXS ports which allow you to interface with normal Analog phones, or the
SIPura 3000 with two FXS ports and one FXO port which allows you to interface with a POTS (Plain Old Telephone Service) line from the telco.
Stop by and say hello in #asterisk on the irc.freenode.org IRC network (Sorry you've gotta register your nick with nickserv to get in...we've had huge problems with spambots
Hopefully these spambots will go away eventually.
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.
1) it is proven that helps to relax
2) no RIAA bugging you
but please make it longer than the usual 30seconds.. and it would be nice to "beep" loud when someone answers the phone, in case the on-hold time will take longer than 2 minutes.
-- There are two kind of sysadmins: Paranoids and Losers. (adapted from D. Bach)
And for the companies intent on fast Chapter 11:
Who says corporate suits have to be uncool?
(Shuddup!)
And remember: Martha was ready to change brokers over bad lift music - it's a good thing!
Please don't use live radio. I work for a large national hardware chain co-op. I'm on hold frequently waiting for a store to do something and occasionally hear a commercial for a competing store. Think Lowes doing advertising for Home Depot with their hold music.
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
It doesn't have to be music -- but beeps? That could easily confuse a caller into thinking there was some error in the system.
The hold music used by the Macaroni Grill (Italian restaurant chain) -- and what they play in the bathrooms in the restaurants -- is an interesting alternative; it's a "learn Italian" CD, teaching you common phrases in Italian.
You might think it'd be annoying... but the voices are soothing (and Italian in general is a very musical language), there's some subtle music in the background, and it really worked for me.
I'm not sure what an equivalent would be for tech support, though... listening to some adenoidal geek stuttering through technical term definitions somehow wouldn't be the same.
There are only 10 types of people: those who understand decimal, those who don't, and, uh, 8 other types I forget.
1) NEVER blame "unusual call volume" for hold times. God, that makes me sick. It's a sneaky way of saying "It's not our fault you're on hold." Yeah, it is.
Ever tried making sure hundreds of support agents are in the right place at the right time to answer the right amount of calls? It's not easy. Especially if there are multiple centers and/or there is something happening (virus, network outtage, 9/11, etc) that's causing increased volumes. Tech support is a loss leader for companies, they don't want to pay any more for it than they have to because it costs a *TON* of money. Quite frankly it may even cost more than losing a few customers for a lot of companies.
2) When the caller has finished their business, NEVER ask "Is there anything else I can help you with blah blah blah?". "No." "Okay then, thank you for calling Ultrablather Systems Software Systems Incorporated." STFU and say goodbye like any normal polite person and let me get off the goddamn phone.
People usually remember the first and last things about a call and not the middle. Most people *like* it when the agent seems to genuinely want to help. You're not going to get rid of this one anytime soon, management wants the companies name said at the end of the call so people will remember it.
As for the rest of your suggestions, I only have an issue with #6, I hate dixieland music...
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.