h a l f b a k e r ySuperficial Intelligence
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I understand being on hold it’s good to have some audio
indicator that you haven’t been disconnected. So why
does
it have to be torture? Soothing nature sounds might be a
lot better than that horrible elevator music.
The worst is when they repeat some message every three
minutes that includes
“thank you for holding”. Ironically
the best way to thank me for holding is to stop repeating
“thank you for holding...thank you for holding...thank
you for holding...thank you for holding...”
Might as well play an air horn every five seconds to keep
the caller awake. “Thank you for holding! We love you!
HOOONK!!!!”.
Pretty bird songs, gentle breeze rustling tree leaves,
even a cat purring. Anything but God awful elevator
music.
Descent II Soundtrack
https://www.youtube...hannel=StarManAevum
per anno, might make an acceptable on-hold playlist. [whatrock, Feb 07 2021]
[link]
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They want you to hang up. QED |
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Perhaps the script could be a little more honest ... ? |
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"Thankyou for calling us. Something you have, probably your money, is important to us, although we care little or nothing for you as a person. Your call is in a queue, and will be answered as soon as an operator becomes available, bearing in mind that we have to balance the costs of our call centres against the amount of resource we hope to extract from you, for the minimum of effort on our part. This is a direct function of a competitive free-market economy. You may wish to try accessing our services via our website, which has a lower per-unit transactional cost to us and therefore we prefer, as it allows us to run the call centre with lower staffing levels - in fact, one of the reasons for the queue is to try and induce (in a subtle way) our customers to migrate to a purely digital platform. You can also download our app to your phone, which we really like, as it gives us all sorts of useful information about you and your life outside your interaction with us, which we can not only use to chisel more resource out of you, but sell to others to they can parasitize you in ways you can't even imagine. Thankyou for calling us. Something you have, probably your money, is important to us .... " |
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//They want you to hang up.// |
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All my this. It's as annoying as they can be without getting obvious. |
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See also: managed dissatisfaction. All companies do this whether they admit it or not. |
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I was about to agree with [8th], but then I cast my mind back to
what it was like before. |
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In the good old days, there were no indications of how long you
would have to hang on the phone, no short cuts for common
enquiries and a greatly increased chance of being passed very
slowly from one unhelpful person to another until being
randomly cut off. |
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What we have now is actually better than that. |
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I prefer the systems that take your number and call you
back when someone is ready (or almost ready) to talk. |
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Perhaps you could have a Hold menu: |
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Press 1 for Classic Rock, 2 for 80's pop, 3 for burps and
farts, 4 for Screaming Thrash Death Metal, 5 for birds
chirping, 6... |
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I've never been able to understand metal. How can you like music consisting of discord and screams? |
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I can't explain it either. |
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OTOH in 1996 a video game, Descent II, came with an
industrial metal soundtrack (link) that seemed perfectly
paired with the game flow, probably because it was
entirely instrumental. No screams or grunts, just a bit of
maniacal laughter. Might add a different zing for Hold
music. |
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//How can you like music consisting of discord and screams?// Well plenty of people pay good money to go to the Opera! |
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Wait, I've got a better idea. |
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^ well that's why we all live here, isn't it. |
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