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Thread: why is hold music always fucked up?

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    Default why is hold music always fucked up?

    I've spent a lot of time recently on hold for various companies, and it's been bugging me, why is the hold music always fucked up? Sometimes it seems like it's a poorly tuned radio at the edge of it's reception range with a lot of white noise and static, and other times it's clearly canned muzak that fades in and out.

    what gives? phone calls themselves are so clear these days, how is hold music so totally and utterly fucked?

    Being on hold is bad enough, but this makes it 3.7x worse to me.

    Anyone?
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    It's terrible. Put it on speaker phone (just loud enough to hear the human voice) and get it away from your ear. I'm also curious. I've also noticed this though. Super annoying.

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    When i worked for Ferrari our hold music was andrea bocelli, the opera singer singing Por Ti Volaire (the opera song Will Ferrel sings in step brothers) on repeat. I used to tell clients to hold and they would yell "JUST PUT THE PHONE DOWN!!, DO NOT PUT ME ON HOLD!!!!!" The sound was clear but that song going on over and over drove our clients crazy lol.
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    Probably because many companies dont call themselves and realize how abysmal the stuff is.

    One client had a radio station tuned for years, but the radio antenna was busted and no one bothered to check ....mostly static for the callers

    Another reason is because many admin staff for smaller companies have no idea how to change this - it was setup years ago by the telco and left alone.

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    "If you prefer to not hear the hold music, please press 1"

    That would be too easy.

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    Originally posted by civic_stylez
    When i worked for Ferrari our hold music was andrea bocelli, the opera singer singing Por Ti Volaire (the opera song Will Ferrel sings in step brothers) on repeat. I used to tell clients to hold and they would yell "JUST PUT THE PHONE DOWN!!, DO NOT PUT ME ON HOLD!!!!!" The sound was clear but that song going on over and over drove our clients crazy lol.
    That's actually awesome. Very Italian.

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    Originally posted by Seth1968
    "If you prefer to not hear the hold music, please press 1"

    That would be too easy.
    Haha, with our phone system (Cisco CallManager) you couldn't be more wrong. At a bare minimum we'd need another server, with licensing and maintenance ~$10K.

    There are a lot of things that degrade the sound quality, the fact that everything on a phone is mono and usually compressed like crazy like an old 64 kbps mp3 file from dial up days. Compound that with often having one music stream that is shared between all phones (the more people on hold, the lower the volume).

    It can be done properly, but as stated, most often it was set up with the phone system years ago with no load on the stream, sounded fine and never looked at again. People using radio stations can get in big trouble as it's illegal to re-broadcast a station without consent, CRTC would fine them in a heartbeat.

    I had to fix ours here as the volume on it was knocking people off their chairs, and it's not a simple volume adjustment with a knob. You have to change a system parameter for the dB gain, re-encode the music file, upload it to all servers, restart some services, then listen to see if you picked the right gain setting, if not, try again.

    The best thing you can do as a listener is tell the person who takes you off hold how bad it sounds and hopefully they didn't know and then they get someone to fix it. And don't forget how much music taste varies, you'll never please everyone.

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    Originally posted by Swank


    Haha, with our phone system (Cisco CallManager) you couldn't be more wrong. At a bare minimum we'd need another server, with licensing and maintenance ~$10K.
    I wasn't necessarily meaning integrating the option into an existing system, but rather why the designers didn't think, "Shouldn't we give them the option to not hear our canned music?".

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    I work at Benz, and our hold music is the default Cisco phone systems one. Sounds like an old school porno.
    Originally posted by GTS Jeff
    You know those bored stay at home moms who's entire lives revolve around driving their kids to soccer, various cleaning accessories, and worrying about neighbourhood rapists? The kind of people that watch the View and go "uh huh..." Those unfulfilled people who try to fill the void in their empty lives by writing whiny letters to the editor complaining about shit that no one really cares about?

    Well imagine if instead of writing that letter to the editor, she just posts on a car forum for car enthusiasts. That's Kritafo.

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    Originally posted by Seth1968


    I wasn't necessarily meaning integrating the option into an existing system, but rather why the designers didn't think, "Shouldn't we give them the option to not hear our canned music?".
    I see what you mean, and I couldn't agree more, but then the system would be simple to administer and Cisco couldn't rake in a fortune on training, certification, and renewals every year

    Originally posted by dj_rice
    I work at Benz, and our hold music is the default Cisco phone systems one. Sounds like an old school porno.
    Everyone says that about the default, it's funny cuz it's true

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    Do you think companies do this on purpose so it weeds out the people that cannot stand being on hold and then call back at another time? Thus reducing the amount of people that are queued up and then spreading out the call volumes a bit especially during those high volume times?

    Just a thought? Not sure if true or not.

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    Originally posted by Prelude_dude
    Do you think companies do this on purpose so it weeds out the people that cannot stand being on hold and then call back at another time? Thus reducing the amount of people that are queued up and then spreading out the call volumes a bit especially during those high volume times?

    Just a thought? Not sure if true or not.
    Totally could see that being part of the reason. Much like how the CRA has no hold music and you wonder if you're even in cue.

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    I have hold music for my home line. Its just me farting into a cardboard tube.

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    Telephone handsets are only good for a fairly narrow bandpass frequency based on human voice. Anything outside that, like music, gets distorted all to hell.

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    Originally posted by dj_rice
    I work at Benz, and our hold music is the default Cisco phone systems one. Sounds like an old school porno.
    For your listening pleasure..


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    Originally posted by carson blocks


    For your listening pleasure..

    Originally posted by GTS Jeff
    You know those bored stay at home moms who's entire lives revolve around driving their kids to soccer, various cleaning accessories, and worrying about neighbourhood rapists? The kind of people that watch the View and go "uh huh..." Those unfulfilled people who try to fill the void in their empty lives by writing whiny letters to the editor complaining about shit that no one really cares about?

    Well imagine if instead of writing that letter to the editor, she just posts on a car forum for car enthusiasts. That's Kritafo.

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    Don't most companies just have a callback feature these days? Or web chat?

    Can't stand being on hold

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    Originally posted by carson blocks


    For your listening pleasure..

    Hahaha. Cicsco hold music is the worst!!!
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    Originally posted by Prelude_dude
    Do you think companies do this on purpose so it weeds out the people that cannot stand being on hold and then call back at another time? Thus reducing the amount of people that are queued up and then spreading out the call volumes a bit especially during those high volume times?

    Just a thought? Not sure if true or not.
    My work tries to have "hip" and "trendy" music for the hold line. They currently have Pharell-Happy as the 1 of the 5 hold songs. The other 4 are probably what you would hear a 16 year old girl listening to.

    They even have a webpage that you can REQUEST different hold music. Every. Single. Request... Has been denied.

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    Originally posted by johnlennon


    My work tries to have "hip" and "trendy" music for the hold line. They currently have Pharell-Happy as the 1 of the 5 hold songs. The other 4 are probably what you would hear a 16 year old girl listening to.

    They even have a webpage that you can REQUEST different hold music. Every. Single. Request... Has been denied.


    EPIC

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