90s corporate jazz. Medium volume. Minimal voice information.

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.

Silence with an occasional (60 seconds-ish is fine) soft doot to let me know the call is still connected.

The sound of someone breathing heavily.

Silence

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’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??

Wii menu music.

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.

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.

the screams of the damned

This remix of the default Cisco hold music.

Low-key music of some sort, with no voice interruption. This way I know the call is still connected, and won’t get false positives thinking they’ve connected me to a person but it’s actually just a recording telling me how important my call is.

Your random piece of useless trivia for the day: If you call Speed Queen (slash Alliance, the laundry machine people) their hold music is the map theme from Chrono Trigger on the SNES, specifically the one from 600 AD. It’s obviously a rearrangement rather than the original chiptune, but I can’t put my finger on whether or not it’s a specific track lifted from OC Remixes, or what. Either way, I’m positive Yasunori Mitsuda isn’t getting any royalties for this one.

Don’t just take my word for it. Give them a ring.

Definitely music, no matter how bad. I know call centers are intentionally understaffed so I will be waiting a long time (and they hope I’ll give up). Ill be putting my phone down and on speaker: I need something that reminds me the call is still there but is audibly distinct from a voice so I notice when they pick up