Hold Music

Sugargirl1019

My parents are on hold with the insurance company - and the hold music is The Piano Guys! I'm enjoying hearing it over speaker phone.

How do they pick hold music? Who gets to choose it? It is nice to hear this music instead of weather channel music (which I do like still).

Also, I was told if you are put on hold by someone, they can hear you if you start talking? But you just hear their music?

randomnumber041616

At the call center I worked at, when someone put a person on hold, the agent couldn't hear them (unless they just muted instead of hold), but when we would QA the call, the hold was recorded from the caller's side.  So we would hear the music and whatever the person was saying while on hold. 

holyguacamole79

WHen my dad had his dental office, his hold music was set as the "easy listening station" here in Houston.  They must have changed the settings and not realized it, because randomly one day the station was the heavy rap station.  So, it was kind of comical calling my dad's office and getting put on hold and hearing about some guy banging his ho.

Dad switched it fast.

flutteringinfl

I've heard that too, but I don't know. It's probably not everywhere. I have the ability to put people on hold on my work phone, but I don't think I can hear them. Granted, I heard this on an episode of the TV show Monk, and they basically explained it like, the person who puts you on hold can't hear you, but there are people whose job it is to listen to people on hold. I don't know that I buy that.

My favorite hold music is Disney World's. They play the soundtracks from rides. It's pretty great, if you're into that.

randomnumber041616

flutteringinftmyers said:

I've heard that too, but I don't know. It's probably not everywhere. I have the ability to put people on hold on my work phone, but I don't think I can hear them. Granted, I heard this on an episode of the TV show Monk, and they basically explained it like, the person who puts you on hold can't hear you, but there are people whose job it is to listen to people on hold. I don't know that I buy that.

My favorite hold music is Disney World's. They play the soundtracks from rides. It's pretty great, if you're into that.

I can confirm this is truth.

flutteringinfl

randomnumber041616 said:

flutteringinftmyers said:

I've heard that too, but I don't know. It's probably not everywhere. I have the ability to put people on hold on my work phone, but I don't think I can hear them. Granted, I heard this on an episode of the TV show Monk, and they basically explained it like, the person who puts you on hold can't hear you, but there are people whose job it is to listen to people on hold. I don't know that I buy that.

My favorite hold music is Disney World's. They play the soundtracks from rides. It's pretty great, if you're into that.

I can confirm this is truth.

For real? Why do they pay someone to do this? I'm genuinely curious.

cupcait927

randomnumber041616 said:

flutteringinftmyers said:

I've heard that too, but I don't know. It's probably not everywhere. I have the ability to put people on hold on my work phone, but I don't think I can hear them. Granted, I heard this on an episode of the TV show Monk, and they basically explained it like, the person who puts you on hold can't hear you, but there are people whose job it is to listen to people on hold. I don't know that I buy that.

My favorite hold music is Disney World's. They play the soundtracks from rides. It's pretty great, if you're into that.

I can confirm this is truth.

Well now I'm freaked out to ever speak while someone has me on hold. I'm sure the people at the insurance companies I work with heard some lovely things come out of my mouth...

randomnumber041616

flutteringinftmyers said:

randomnumber041616 said:

flutteringinftmyers said:

I've heard that too, but I don't know. It's probably not everywhere. I have the ability to put people on hold on my work phone, but I don't think I can hear them. Granted, I heard this on an episode of the TV show Monk, and they basically explained it like, the person who puts you on hold can't hear you, but there are people whose job it is to listen to people on hold. I don't know that I buy that.

My favorite hold music is Disney World's. They play the soundtracks from rides. It's pretty great, if you're into that.

I can confirm this is truth.

For real? Why do they pay someone to do this? I'm genuinely curious.

Well, I've worked in 4 different call centers and I guess I wouldn't technically say that their job was "to listen to people on hold". But they do pay people to listen to calls, so listening to people on hold is part of that job. It's done for quality purposes to make sure that people aren't being put on hold for over the allowable amount of time. For example, when I was a QA analyst, we had to listen to the hold and time it to make sure it did not exceed 2 minutes before the agent returned to the line. Also, they were required to request permission before placing someone on hold and thank them for holding when returning.

flutteringinfl

randomnumber041616 said:

flutteringinftmyers said:

randomnumber041616 said:

flutteringinftmyers said:

I've heard that too, but I don't know. It's probably not everywhere. I have the ability to put people on hold on my work phone, but I don't think I can hear them. Granted, I heard this on an episode of the TV show Monk, and they basically explained it like, the person who puts you on hold can't hear you, but there are people whose job it is to listen to people on hold. I don't know that I buy that.

My favorite hold music is Disney World's. They play the soundtracks from rides. It's pretty great, if you're into that.

I can confirm this is truth.

For real? Why do they pay someone to do this? I'm genuinely curious.

Well, I've worked in 4 different call centers and I guess I wouldn't technically say that their job was "to listen to people on hold". But they do pay people to listen to calls, so listening to people on hold is part of that job. It's done for quality purposes to make sure that people aren't being put on hold for over the allowable amount of time. For example, when I was a QA analyst, we had to listen to the hold and time it to make sure it did not exceed 2 minutes before the agent returned to the line. Also, they were required to request permission before placing someone on hold and thank them for holding when returning.

Oh that makes sense. I know I usually get the, "This call may be recorded for quality and training," but I guess I didn't think that people were listening in real time and I assumed that the holds could be monitored by computer. Are all calls monitored this way? Because then you'd need like, one quality control person for every agent.

randomnumber041616

flutteringinftmyers said:

randomnumber041616 said:

flutteringinftmyers said:

randomnumber041616 said:

flutteringinftmyers said:

I've heard that too, but I don't know. It's probably not everywhere. I have the ability to put people on hold on my work phone, but I don't think I can hear them. Granted, I heard this on an episode of the TV show Monk, and they basically explained it like, the person who puts you on hold can't hear you, but there are people whose job it is to listen to people on hold. I don't know that I buy that.

My favorite hold music is Disney World's. They play the soundtracks from rides. It's pretty great, if you're into that.

I can confirm this is truth.

For real? Why do they pay someone to do this? I'm genuinely curious.

Well, I've worked in 4 different call centers and I guess I wouldn't technically say that their job was "to listen to people on hold". But they do pay people to listen to calls, so listening to people on hold is part of that job. It's done for quality purposes to make sure that people aren't being put on hold for over the allowable amount of time. For example, when I was a QA analyst, we had to listen to the hold and time it to make sure it did not exceed 2 minutes before the agent returned to the line. Also, they were required to request permission before placing someone on hold and thank them for holding when returning.

Oh that makes sense. I know I usually get the, "This call may be recorded for quality and training," but I guess I didn't think that people were listening in real time and I assumed that the holds could be monitored by computer. Are all calls monitored this way? Because then you'd need like, one quality control person for every agent.

I can't speak for every call center everywhere or anything, but at the ones that I worked at, there was one where they had QA's listening live who would literally be at your desk the second you got off the phone telling you that you were wrong and to call the person back.  The others were all just recorded and listened to later.  

Not every call was checked for quality.  To get my certification to QA, I had to listen to something like 20 phone calls and the other supervisor had to listen to the same calls separate from me and we had to have scored it within a few points of each other for me to pass.  Once I was certified, between the two of us, we usually pulled about 5 calls from each agent per week.  We had around 30 agents.  Then, we would also get a call with the company we worked for each week and go over 5 random calls with them and their QA people.