Tech Support Hold Music

I found myself on hold the other day.

I needed to pay Sony for some repair work they were doing for my boss' laptop.  All I had to do was give them my business credit card number, and we were set.

However, I got the new guy.  It was this poor soul's first day on the job, and he was overwhelmed.  He kept putting me on hold to check what he should do next with his boss and coworkers.

At first, I was annoyed that it was taking so long to simply give the man my card number and move on with life.

And then I noticed something odd.  Every time I was placed back in the hold queue, the hold music changed.

First up was Yanni (prounounced 'Yawny', which is French for "Help, I can't fall asleep!").  This probably added to me being perturbed.

The tribal bongos helped pick up the mood, though.  Nice touch.

Some well-timed Christmas ballads put me in the holiday spirit for a bit.

My fourth trip to the hold queue brought some gospel music, reminding me of the reason for the season.

Thankfully, the reggae hold time wasn't too long.  I never did like reggae, Bob Marley or otherwise ("Why all the foosin' and fittin'?").

The icing on the cake was the Hindi music.  I've never heard Hindi music while on hold with someone from India, which would make sense, but if you're waiting for the Sony repair center in San Diego, get ready!

All together, I was on hold for 28 minutes while the gentlemen learned how to type 16 numbers into his system.

Turns out it was half an hour well spent.


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3 comments:

Sgt. Wolverine said...

Wait...there wasn't any classical music? I thought (public domain) classical music was a staple of phone systems!

Ricky Anderson said...

I think the classical starts in Hold Hour #2.

Serge said...

Usually, businesses only have one kind of hold music which they play. I'm actually surprised that this company has various genre of music which they play.