Waiting is the worst thing. Waiting to speak to customer service is the worst thing. Your phone reminds me of the 18 minutes I've spent waiting, and it's its own version.

A survey conducted by TalkTo text-message company, found that more than half of Americans spend between 10 and 20 minutes waiting on hold every week. This adds up over 43 days. Yikes.

There is a silver lining to this situation. Many companies have "hold music" that contains bangers you can listen to while you wait.

IKEA is known for sticking to their Swedish roots, and they rock an ABBA medley to play as their hold music. This is a practice I 100% support. Admiral Insurance UK enjoys entertaining its customers on hold with the Star Wars or Game of Thrones soundtracks.

In the late 20th century, when I worked in customer service for Disney catalogs, I heard the same hold music that the customer as I was listening to their requests. This meant that I heard the same songs every day for hours. The soundtrack to the latest Disney film was their hold music.

Let me just tell you, I have a nervous breakdown every time I hear Phil Collins' Your Heart from Zar. It turns out that there is a person to blame.

Did you know that someone invented the concept of hold music. Alfred Levy, a businessman, was that person.

Hold Music Was A Result Of An Accident

CallsOnHold reveals that Levy, an inventor and entrepreneur, owned a factory next to a radio station in 1962. He was experiencing problems with his telephone lines one day. He went to investigate and discovered that a loose wire had been touching a metal beam on the building.

The strange accident had made his office and building telephone handsets into giant receivers, causing his phone lines and radio stations to broadcast the signal through the loose wire. Callers could hear the radio broadcast even though they were on hold.

Making an Accident into a Business Opportunity

Levy, being the creative inventor and entrepreneur he is, didn't find this incident annoying. He realized that he had found a business opportunity. He created a system that controlled the wire contact. In 1966, he filed a patent for his invention on the "Music On Hold" machine. It is now in the Smithsonian.

Levy's original concept has been reborn more than 50 years later as a marketing strategy that allows companies and customers to communicate.

Companies can send messages to customers on hold, rather than listening to the same radio playlist every week or hearing the same mix of instrumentals that are copyright-free. This allows companies to communicate information about everything, from new products to promotions.

We might all be waiting in silence to speak to a company representative on the phone if it weren't for Levy. That's an alternative reality that I don't want.

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By: Perry Carpenter
Title: The Reason Why Music Plays While On Hold Started Because Of An Accident
Sourced From: www.suggest.com/reason-music-plays-on-hold/2602512/
Published Date: Mon, 29 Nov 2021 17:25:00 +0000

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