A purring cat. If I am in the last 3 of the queue then this: https://invidious.nerdvpn.de/watch?v=kpnW68Q8ltc
My city’s basic help line has some classical music that sounds slightly sad but also like you’re going on an important quest and that really captures the mood of being on hold but making it feel epic.
Alternatively I would go with one of these bangers, they are great to put on in the background of a party
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.
90s corporate jazz. Medium volume. Minimal voice information.
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??
The sound of someone breathing heavily.
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
This is the most infuriating one!
VMware?
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:
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.
Silence with an occasional (60 seconds-ish is fine) soft doot to let me know the call is still connected.
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.
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 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 was on hold once and the music was some pretty solid low effort lounge jazz that cycled through like 12 different but similar songs. It was calm enough to relax to and when the call actually got ansered I found myself missing the chill soundtrack to my day. More places should do it that way.
My second favorite is when it plays about 2 min of shitty music recording and then interrupts to tell me the call is important, but whatever system they have is clearly not handling this well so the quality of both soundbites starts to degrade the longer you’re on hold until the music sounds like a dying speaker pressed to a handheld somewhere and the important call voice is unintelligible for every other syllable. Those are so fucking fun because it feels like a genuine horror story moment.
I imagine that after 20 minutes it sounds like a combination of rusty chains and someone driving over a pack of oreos
At about the hour mark it would still play the second half of the music but the first half sounded like a broken vcr trying to rewind. The voice was mostly just moaning but like, when an old voice to text trys to read “ooooooooohhhh” as O, O, O, O, oo, O, O, oh, heavy sight, “letter H”.
