Waiting Music Elevator
Walda Caesar
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But it doesn't have to be quite as bad an experience as it currently is. One of the most useful lessons I've learnt from behavioral economics and psychology in general is that our behavior is very dependent upon context. The same person will often make very different decisions in different contexts and environments. We are more likely to make risky decisions in an environment that feels safe. You've probably heard the advice to 'never go shopping when you are hungry', because hungry people buy more calories, and often less healthy foods. A quick snack before going to the supermarket can work wonders. More relevant in this case is that our emotional state influences how we respond to situations. If someone is happy, or relaxed, they are more likely to engage in empathic dialog, and more likely to listen and seek solutions. If they are frustrated or angry, they are more likely to be confrontational.
I suspect that relooping bars of elevator music, accompanied by a repeated reassurance that 'your business is important to us' are meant to sooth a customer, and create a positive emotion space when a customer service representative finally becomes available. However, if this ever had any real positive effect on a customers mood at all, I can guarantee it is completely and utterly obliterated by the 50th repetition! Likewise, the authenticity of a message stating that a customer is important is severely stretched after the 30th or 40th hearing.
Worse, having to listen to that repetitive music and messaging make it almost impossible for the customer to do anything else. Many companies now offer a call back option, which is one reasonable solution to the wait problem. But another option would be a simple mute option. In my personal case, I could then sit by my computer and work productively for an hour while I wait for customer service to come on line. Something that is very difficult to do when music is looping, and platitudes are being repeated. Much as many of us like to think we can multitask, in reality, we are not at all good at it. So even if we can force the annoying messaging into the background of our consciousness, they almost certainly still suck up cognitive bandwidth, making it more difficult for the holding customer to do anything productive or enjoyable.
Offering a mute option, with an alarm when a customer service agent is available would not eliminate the frustration of long hold times, but it would reduce it. It could be a simple audio alert, and could be developed into a vibration or visual alert over time. But just for now, a simple audio alert would reduce the impact of that frustrating wait, in turn creating a more positive emotional context that benefits the customer, and the long suffering customer service representative as well. To that point, I can only imagine what it is like having to start every discussion at work with someone who has been on hold for an hour, listening to bad music, and repetitive, insincere messaging. It's a tough job that could be made a little easier.
So, if anyone is already doing this, that is terrific, and please let me know. And as a public service, I'd like to challenge all other customer service organizations to firstly walk a mile (or several miles) in your customers shoes, and spend an hour doing nothing but listening to your own 'hold' music and messaging. Then, explore how you can offer a mute option.
Elevator music (also known as Muzak, piped music, or lift music) is a type of background music played in elevators, in rooms where many people come together for reasons other than listening to music, and during telephone calls when placed on hold. Before the emergence of the Internet, such music was often "piped" to businesses and homes[1] through telephone lines, private networks or targeted radio broadcasting (as in the BBC's Music While You Work, where powerful speakers were set up in factories to make the broadcast audible).[2][3]
There is no specific sound associated with elevator music, but it usually involves simple instrumental themes from "soft" popular music, or "light" classical music being performed by slow strings. This type of music was produced, for instance, by the Mantovani Orchestra, and conductors such as Franck Pourcel and James Last, peaking in popularity around the 1970s.[4]
This style of music is sometimes used to comedic effect in mass media such as film, where intense or dramatic scenes may be interrupted or interspersed with such anodyne music while characters use an elevator. Some video games have used music similarly: Metal Gear Solid 4 where a few elevator music-themed tracks are accessible on the in-game iPod, as well as System Shock, Rise of the Triad: Dark War, GoldenEye 007, Mass Effect, and Earthworm Jim.[original research?]
There are a number of societies, such as Pipedown,[8] that are dedicated to reducing the extent and intrusiveness of piped music. This campaign group proposes that some people can be deeply annoyed by piped music, and even find it spoils their enjoyment in recreation or drives them out of shops. They suggest that eight out of 10 people have left an establishment early because it was too noisy.[8] The Good Pub Guide 2017 called for a ban on piped music in pubs, already the case in houses managed by the Samuel Smith Old Brewery.
It's a panoptic experience, being on hold while listening to someone singing about being on hold. Depending how long it takes for someone else to join the call, you could be listening for awhile. The music builds as time goes on, culminating in a spoken verse that begins: "Well, let me tell you all a story / about a man who was on hold all day..." This unusually self-aware song is the default music for a conference call service called UberConference, where "I'm On Hold" plays on a loop for anyone who calls in early, on almost every call that doesn't start exactly when it's scheduled to (or doesn't ever start at all). It's selected by nine out of ten call organizers, and plays over a million times per month, says Craig Walker, CEO of Dialpad, owner of UberConference.
This is where it gets tricky. David Green is the board chair of the Experience Marketing Association, and has been focused on hold music for more than two decades. (Formerly called the On Hold Messaging Association, the group gives out awards each year for the best on-hold experiences.) Green enumerated some things that can lead to a hold gone wrong: "Small loops of music that repeat over and over at short intervals might subliminally or consciously make you count the intervals, and make you aggravated that you've heard it three or four or five times," he says. Jingles on repeat are understandably irritating, as are some advertising messages. Auto dealers, he says, often play their radio ads over the phone, which is a mistake, because most customers call for repairs rather than sales. "Can you listen in your mind for a minute and imagine the typical car commercial on the radio?" he says. "Now imagine listening to that when you're placed on hold, not particularly happy that your car will cost $500 to repair."
This brings up the ever-present question of appropriate branding for your business. At a funeral home, Green says, you don't want an upbeat pop song, for obvious reasons. Mark Malekpour, who works at Beatsuite, a music library which sells a variety of songs specifically for hold systems, says that companies too often want popular music. "For an insurance company, you don't want something from Queen or U2," he said. "When you're choosing music for an insurance company, it shouldn't feel happy or feel good or lighthearted, because insurance is something you have to have, and you want to think, 'These guys get what insurance is all about.' " (Beatsuite's bestselling hold song is called "Inspiring Innovation," which is tagged as: "Success, achievement, and trustworthy.")
But there are also the technical limitations of the form to consider. Mainly, don't get too complicated. Many companies want classical music on their hold lines, but experts say it rarely works because music has to be compressed into an extremely low-quality format to be played over analog phone lines. "When you have an orchestra of many instruments with loud parts and quiet parts, and then you're crushing it down, the quiet parts become fuzzy and the loud parts become distorted," explains Malekpour. "You're running up against the limitations of the telephone lines because they were designed for voice only." Simple can beat creative. "People like to make fun of elevator music and that's fine," says Cristina Stacy, vice president of On Hold Marketing Works. "But the thing with elevator music is that it's simple."
Corporate cost-cutting and new technology have resulted in the advent of automated systems that can make the on-hold experience even more frustrating. It can feel near-impossible to get a human on the phone these days, which a national survey conducted by Consumer Reports found to be Americans' second-greatest annoyance, after hidden fees but beating out inaccurate weather reports and dog poop. Green observes that often people call as a last resort, because something on the website wasn't clear, perhaps, and they really need an answer quickly. So callers are captive listeners, a state often associated with the gridlock of waiting, whether in line at a Starbucks, in a dentist's chair, or in the proverbial elevator making its slow way up.
Traditional hold music can function as a kind of anesthetic, both against what might await you on the other end of the line and against the seemingly endless, infuriating condition of waiting under capitalism. It can create a sort of calming pall, a customer service lullaby for your wait. Green said that his favorite experience in his years working in hold music was helping with a collection agency that was sending past-due medical bills, often quite high, to people and asking them to call a specific number. Originally, the hold sounds were a simple double-beep that telegraphed to callers that the line was live. But, Green says, he advised the company to add "some very low, low, low beats-per-minute piano music, to take it down a little bit, and add messaging on the top that said to that caller, 'You may or may not owe this or the full amount on the bills sent to you, please have your information ready, so we may help you work through this.' "
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