Music just to let me know I’m still connected. Preferably instrumental, no vocals. And FUCKING STOP coming on every 30sec “your call is important to us…” making me think the agent picked up FFS.
i want to not hear that i can use the website yo resolve my issue because i am only calling because the website is unusable trash
VMware?
This is the most infuriating one!
Something I can zone out of, and no talking, so when someone does finally answer it’ll get my attention again. If you can’t/won’t staff your call centres appropriately the least you can do is let me do other things while I wait.
Also this thread reminded of this:
I dislike most of the music and if you tell me how much you care you lie to me. If you cared so much you would have employed enough people to answer the phone immediately.
Your call is important to us. Not more important than the 15 people in line in front of you, or our regularly scheduled breaks, but certainly no less important than the 20 people who called after you.
I’d ideally like to be put in a virtual queue for a callback so I don’t have to be constantly paying attention to my phone. I’ve had this offered a couple of times and it’s great, how is that not the standard already??
I like when they tell me to press whatever number and they’ll call me back when it’s my turn
Do those ever work? I’ve tried them a few times but always have to try again the next day when it never happens
I try it once per destination but yeah it’s pretty hit or miss. Sometimes people just forget to call you back ever
I’ve never had it not work for me. I rarely call to phone lines nowadays, but a few I have over the years that offered the service, they always called me back.
I’ve had reasonable luck with Alaska Airlines the two times I’ve tried it, and Fedex once, I think.
Those would be great if they’d tell you what number they’re going to call from.
a scream that increases in volume the closer i am to the front of the queue
Imagine using the Sonic underwater nearly drowning music when you’re the next person in line.
I despise the music just because they always play it at the highest possible volume. I have to turn it down to the lowest point in my telephone, to be able to endure it at all. Then when a human voice appears, I hardly hear it.
My favourite is the barely in range radio station. Besides that, who in the blue fuck tried to play music through an audio channel that is severely bandwidth restricted and filtered for voice, music over the phone has never ever worked well.
Right?? Once the hold music starts, I set my phone to speaker at a low volume just so I can hear it playing while I place it on my desk. Then someone finally picks up and I don’t notice they’re already talking.
It’s easier to listen for when the music stops…
Personally I prefer the default “waiting for someone to pick up”-sound so that I know the call is still active. And if it takes more than a minute, maybe a voice confirming “yeah, this is taking a while” with my position in the queue. Do not:
- Whoever recorded the voice made the right kind of noise to make it sound like someone is answering
- Update me with queue position unless the queue position has actually changed.
That way I can do whatever while waiting, including listening to music of my choice.
My least preferred option is a voice telling me how important my call is, how much they love me, and how they will do anything they can to get to me as fast as possible except from hiring more people to pick up the phone.
Also, did Cisco change their default on-hold music for the first time in decades? I wrote this while on hold at them to have a support ticket resolved.
how they will do anything they can to get to me as fast as possible except from hiring more people
Aww yeah, story of late stage capitalism
Music that hasn’t been compressed to hell and back.
If the music is interrupted by anything, then that needs to be:
- brief and preferably informative. Queue position is useful; how valuable my call is is not.
- infrequent. I don’t need to know my queue position that often, and I don’t need to know how important my call is ever.
- clearly not someone picking up my call. Fade the audio out nicely and then immediately start the voice part with no silence, so I don’t start listening to see if the talking is a call handler. Ideally, just do this at the end of the song. See above.
Most hold systems play a short piece of music where everything outside of 300-3000Hz has been obliterated so it sounds like absolute ass, interrupt it every 30s or so to play the same pointless speech clip, and initiate that clip with some silence and clicks that sound like someone picking up a phone.
The sound of someone breathing heavily.
I prefer music, with a wait time update every so often, so I know something is actually happening.
But not the same 20 seconds of music that repeats on a loop. That is probably the worst, second only to the same song being played over and over.
Some kind of non-irritating sound or music without voices to confirm the call hasn’t been disconnected in case I zone out or switch to another task.
I’d like to hear a never ending stream of dad jokes interspersed with “you are number $x in the queue, your estimated wait time is $y”
My favourite is being on hold for disability benefits when one of my symptoms is sound sensitivity which makes it hard to listen to music and they play shitty music really loud. And then intersperse it with messages that sound like somebody answering the phone but it’s just a message to say that I’m on hold (which is useful because I couldn’t tell that from the hold music and the fact I wasn’t talking to somebody) and that the call volume is unusually high and definitely not like this every day on purpose as a cynical ploy to disincentive people for applying for benefits because you can’t apply online where I live. And then they answer and you have a conversation, the whole point of which is to get them to send you a form to fill in online, but the call cuts out half way through and they don’t call you back so you have to go through the whole thing again but you can’t because the first wait has used up all your spoons for the day. I’m not angry, why d’you ask?
Maybe just the occasional beep would be fine.
