Picking Hold Music

Told you I was bored.

Beth is bitching about crappy service from her car insurance company (and rightfully so). This little bit is what caught my eye:

So I called them, and listened to the world’s worst holding pattern music, something like salsa meets reggae.

This reminds me of a story. Before I had my current job I spent two weeks working as a traveling PC tech. Basically, if you called Dell or Compaq (or a few smaller companies) for support and they decided that a part need to be replaced, I was one of the people who would come to your house/office and replace it for you.

Each morning we had to fill out paper work for the broken parts that we had to send back to the manufacturer. One day one of the guys I'm working with called one of the smaller companies to find out what he needed to do with a part and gets put on hold. Before the music starts playing, he's asked what kind of music he wants to listen to.

Let that sink in for a minute. They had different options for hold music.

Either this is the most considerate company in the world, or customers spend way to much time on hold, and this is an attempt to appease them. I seem to remember it being the second, as the guy was still on hold when I left to make my rounds.

Posted by Matt at September 15, 2003 02:38 PM