Sunday, 20 June 2010

Hold music

We have switched the office over to the new call server, and I have managed to set up the billing system to produce itemised bills with PDF and XML nicely. We have switched most incoming calls over to the new server this weekend too.

I think I can guess the next issue we'll have - and that is people knowing they are on hold.

Now, if the person on hold has a SNOM - they see on the screen they are on hold.
If the person on hold is one of our mobiles they also know, and have a nice voice saying so.

But normal PSTN calls just get silence, which is a bit of a shame. I can see I am going to have to stream some sort of hold music, beep, or message. Oh joy...

Should not take too long though.
Posted by at 20:46

2 comments:

  1. Why just one hold music when a firm as adaptable as A+A could surely offer the caller their own choice of hold hell: "Press 1 for Vivaldi's 'Four Seasons'; press 2 for some funky stuff that makes you feel old; press 3 for an ethereal Cocteau Twins rip-off; press 4 for a repetitive electronic dirge version of 'Greensleeves'; press * to be told regularly how important your call is to us, press # for irritating advertising and to be told that you wouldn't have needed to call if you'd bothered to look at our website...".

    And while you're at it can you get that girl with the really gushy voice to do the "[breath in]Thank you for calling A+A" intro as if your call was the most exciting thing to happen to her all year?

    Oh, sorry, thought I was on the AOL website for a moment.
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  2. You could have games to play while on hold! Noughts and crosses using your phone keypad would be fairly easy. After you've been playing for a while, you get another voice prompt: "You are now at the front of the queue. Press one to speak to an operator now, or two to finish your game first."

    Or what about giving callers the chance to talk to other people in the queue?

    If you're inventive enough, people will get through to the operator and say, "Oh no, there's no problem with my service. I just phoned up for the on-hold stuff."

    (BTW, I've never had a problem getting through to A&A, in case you were wondering!)
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