"We're sorry, all of our operators are busy helping other customers. Your call is important to us. Please continue to hold."
We've all heard that annoying string of words more than we'd like. But how much more?
Data collection provider Research Now did some kind of scientific (?) survey and determined that the average person will spend 43 DAYS of their life waiting on hold. That is longer than Moses and the Israelites spent wandering in the desert!
Remember the old days when you just got some kind of middle of the road music to listen to while you waited on hold? Now you get to hear advertising for more products from a company you're probably already irritated with, insincere platitudes, and warnings that your call may be recorded for training purposes. Aargh! Whatever!
I was just chatting with our engineer Tony about this topic....and he had a brilliant idea. Come up with games you could play on your touch tone phone while waiting. You could play "Simon" and try to duplicate keypad tones. Or you could be prompted "touch 1 to enter the castle, touch 2 to slay the dragon, touch 3 to fill your moat with boiling acid."
He also pointed out that it would be fascinating to get tapes of people yelling at the pre-recorded messages. I expect you'd hear a lot of stuff like this..."My call is important to you....blah blah blah....my MONEY may be important to you but I'm not." "No I don't want to buy another crappy product from you when I've been holding for 15 minutes to complain about your other crappy product.."
Have any other ideas on this topic? Don't call us..we'll probably just put you on hold.
**the above picture is me, on hold with Santa Claus, circa 1964
