Please hold!

Have you ever been on the receiving end of a call that has instantly been put on hold?
I have many times.
Ring ring, ring ring.
‘Good afternoon, XYZ Company, Melody speaking, would you mind holding?’ Click.

You don’t even get a chance to protest before your ear holes are being assaulted by some of the worst music know to man or a poorly tuned radio station. Plus, what would happen if you said ‘Yes, I mind holding’.

Today, someone at work was on hold, on speaker, so we all (those within a 10 metre radius) had to endure the tinny strains of synthesised Green Sleeves.

I remember many years ago when I was working for a start-up company as the office manage I had to get a telephony system put in. We were given a choice of hold music; radio, white noise, the classics played by fingerless monks of the moors of whoop whoop or our own messages recorded and played back. The MD selected the ‘Classics’ because he didn’t know what to say and he was too cheap to pay for the radio option.

After three months of countless comments about bleeding ears from customers he decided to write and record some nuggets of wisdom like, ‘Your call is very important to us, please hold’ and ‘If you’d like to leave a message press star and someone will get back to you’. They were powerful, but to the point. The customers stopped complaining.

Why do companies insist on torturing their customers with these crimes against music?

Also, the 80s have a lot to answer for with the invention of the keyboard you don’t have to play but could just press back beat buttons.