What this means is that on-hold music and messaging is necessarily curated according to the needs of the client and the customer. “You really want to use the time that people wait on hold to make them feel good about your company,” says Jerry Brown, the founder and CEO of BusinessVoice. The company also determines the caller demographic and from there creates its plan to make the call experience better. If the average hold time is five minutes, for example, a caller doesn’t want to hear a three-minute loop.
They will determine things like how frequently the same person calls and the longest time a person will be put on hold. When creating an on-hold marketing plan for a new client, BusinessVoice initiates a “caller experience” audit. It estimates it serves up to 250,000 business locations, but that’s just the tip of the iceberg plenty more hold “factories” – from Mood Media to small freelancers – serve the on-hold needs of international business. The EMA, a consortium of agencies which promotes on-hold messaging as a “viable marketing tool”, has chapters in North America, Europe, and Australia. They see the on-hold experience as an expression of brand identity, mixing music with a verbal message – which sounds closer to a radio advertisement than, say, an easy-listening jazz number.īusiness is on board with this marketing-centric approach, if the membership of the Experience Marketing Association is an indication. There are companies like BusinessVoice, which specialises in on-hold marketing for mid- to large-size companies. Nowadays hold music isn’t left to chance. “It’s so awful and great at the same time,” commented one of the fans of the beloved cheesy track, which has had over 1.3 million views on YouTube alone. It was installed and more than 65 million phones later is now a global earworm. The music – with it retro 80s synth and drum loop – was probably destined for obscurity until Deel landed an IT job at Cisco and offered the piece as hold music for Cisco’s phones. 1, was composed in 1989 by Tim Carleton and Darrick Deel and recorded on a four-track in a garage. “You want to stay away from anything that is abrupt or that could be perceived as abrasive.”Ī vintage example of this type of smooth track is the default hold music used by Cisco, the high-tech telecommunications company. “You may want to stay away from things that are too lush, or that have dramatic shifts in tempo and energy,” says Turner. Because the audio is compressed and delivered without much equalisation, hold-musicologists recommend instrumental music that is textually suited to this kind of delivery (pop songs not withstanding). Audio quality on a telephone is often not so good.
Maybe this hints at the reason why “classic” hold music can drive us crazy. “I argue the main torture results from repetition.” “I definitely think hold music has a negative effect on mental health,” says Dean Olsher, a New York-based music therapist. Neither was especially therapeutic because the sound quality down the phone line was really poor. The company went bankrupt in 2009 and was acquired by Mood Media, who ditched the Muzak name forever. Over the years this kind of background mood music became so prevalent at workplaces and hotels – with speakers hidden in the potted palms – that it sparked a backlash: the brand name Muzak became a noun with negative connotations. This kind of music was pioneered by the Muzak company beginning in the 1930s typically, it offered instrumental versions of popular songs, albeit recorded by major band leaders of the day. The stereotypical hold music is an insipid instrumental track, musical wallpaper similar to elevator (or lift) music. “And then more and more folks realised that this is a wonderful marketing opportunity in which one can convey messages about what’s happening with the business.” “At first the market adopted this idea of using music on hold to decrease the perceived waiting time and also to fill in those awkward moments of silence,” says Danny Turner, Mood Media’s global SVP of creative programming.
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