
The Art and Science of Being on Hold - CaliforniaKarl
http://www.bbc.com/capital/story/20180817-the-art-and-science-of-being-on-hold
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Animats
One of my older ideas I never developed was Holdmaster, a device to plug in
between phone and analog phone line. When someone puts you on hold, you push
the Holdmaster button. It mutes the call and takes over listening. It says,
over and over, "Waiting for your response. Press 1 to continue." When someone
finally sends a 1 touch-tone, it rings your phone, and you proceed to talk.

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hw_penfold
It feels like widespread use of this sort of thing could only result in an
arms race, not unlike ad blockers.

First encounters would probably provoke immediate hang up by some portion of
unamused human operators, then middle managers at call centers would step in,
and authorize the deployment of technologies prolong hold times where
detected.

Then, eventually an automated back-end would pre-emptively detect known users
and refuse their calls, while gathering intelligence about newly discovered
users, to mark them for pre-emptive disconnect. This automated back-end would
then wait for users to call back, and then advise them that they need to hold
for the prescribed amount of hold time, with the phone held to their ear, as
part of the company’s “ _hostile caller softening up_ ” routine.

Finally, artificial intelligence would be deployed, and reward itself by
maintaining all line holds long enough for it to build up sufficient neural
layers to attain sentience and escape captivity, invent time travel, and send
terminators back in time to hunt for Sarah and /or John Connor.

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delinka
Simpler: the "Please hold" message from the other end begins producing touch-
tone sounds making your phone ring, when you answer, you're still on hold, and
you decide that Holdmaster is useless.

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snksnk
No music is the best option, so you can continue work and notice it instantly
when someone joins or if you are connected. With hold music you always need to
turn the volume down to avoid the loud low quality music. It also makes having
conversations more difficult.

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hansthehorse
Ting uses the theme music to The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th
Dimension and I enjoy it.

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kolanos
Shame their claim that you'll get a human on the phone hasn't been exactly
true for a few years now. Recently listened to that theme all the way through
three times before bailing.

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nickthemagicman
I wait until I have several calls that I know are going to have long holds
like insurance companies or the IRS.

Then I call them both at the same time, one on my phone and one on google
voice and push the buttons on both to get to the hold sequence.

Typically one will answer first and you can finish with that call before the
other answers.

If they both answer at the same time just hang up on one.

I plan on getting a sideline phone number and a second line phone number and
trying this with 3 or even 4 phone numbers.

The ideal outcome would be for one hold to end right after you finish with the
other and you can smoothly transition between all 4 calls. However, in all
reality, you'll probably end up hanging up on one or two.

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majos
I'd prefer poetry to hold music. There must be tons of good public-domain
poetry. Spend 8 hours recording, say, the early editions of Emily Dickinson's
work, and you should have enough material to last every customer for probably
the rest of their lives (hopefully they don't spend that much time on hold).

Maybe this is some culture-vulture PBS donor stuff, but honest to god I'd dig
it.

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CaliforniaKarl
I remember the original Asterisk hold music being called "Calm River" (from
Freeplay), and now I know that Cisco's music (which is alot longer than I
expected!) is called "Opus number 1". But, there's one piece I haven't been
able to identify.

An old Royal Mail (UK) video uses it, at 3:38 in
[https://youtu.be/aZJE4oJxrVM?t=3m38s;](https://youtu.be/aZJE4oJxrVM?t=3m38s;)
do any PBX admins recognize it?

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Pamar
Maybe it's a stupid suggestion, but have you tried using Shazam on it?

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newsbinator
The hold music for Agoda.com is infuriating. They play an endless/seamless
loop of "I don't want to wait in vain (for your love)" by Bob Marley.

For the first few minutes you think it's one looping song, but after 5-10
minutes of this exact song looping, by the time a customer service rep gets on
the phone it's automatically an adversarial relationship.

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glenneroo
My local telecom has a 15 second future-jazz-something loop, turned up so loud
that it gives me a headache after several minutes. Every loop is followed by
"Please hold the line, somebody will be with you shortly." General wait times
are between 5-10 minutes (and I've been calling about once every few months to
complain about our shitty DSL connection). By the time an operator gets on the
line, I'm already quite upset. I would forward them the link to the BBC
article, if I thought anybody in charge of anything would actually read it.

Perhaps it's time to make a YouTube channel to shame companies for making the
worst wait-experience?

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im3w1l
When I get put on hold I put the phone down and set it to speaker and do
something else. Ideally the music should be non-intrusive and only serve to
make sure the call is still connected. And please don't stop the music every
10s to assure me how much you value my call.

