Going Back to the Essence: Look Out For The “Hold Music” In Your Organisation
If you’ve ever been on hold when trying to contact a company by phone, you’ve probably experienced the irritation of hold music. Typically, this is an irritating experience for two reasons:
- The sound quality is awful. This is particularly true if you’re calling via a mobile/cell phone. I gather that phone calls via the GSM network are optimised for voice; they literally cut out non-voice frequencies to save bandwidth, meaning music sounds compressed and garbled.
- The music is interrupted every 30 seconds with a recorded voice explaining how important your call is and how ‘we’re experiencing unexpectedly high call volumes right now…’.
I can’t imagine anyone particularly liking hold music, which begs the question why does it exist in the first place, particularly when the phone system compresses and garbles it? Surely it just irritates customers which is bad for everyone?
My best guess is that companies use hold music because it’s the ‘done thing’. It’s a well-established convention and telephony systems provide the functionality out of the box. To use a tried and tested cliche “it’s the way we’ve always done things around here”. Crucially, when implementing or changing a telephony system this leads to questions like “what hold music shall we use…?” rather than “should we use hold music at all…?” or “should we create a service where people don’t have to hold at all?”.
I’ve always thought that one of the ‘fun’ parts of travelling by air is the in-flight meal. When packed in economy, there’s a real art to opening the foil or cellophane wrapped food items without showering the contents over yourself or a fellow passenger. This is made even more problematic if, like me, you enjoy the occasional beer in the airport before the flight…
Even though it was a long time ago, I can still vividly remember passing my driving test and earning my licence. I can recall driving back to the test centre, parking up, and receiving the good news. I can still remember the examiner’s name, the fact that it was a sunny day, and I can even remember which parking bay I pulled into. It was a significant day for me– especially since I didn’t pass the first (or even second) time, and I’m embarrassed to admit that I had what seemed like hundreds of hours of tuition before I finally passed.
I hazard a guess that many of us have worked in organisations where data is, quite understandably, seen as the crucial “life blood”. Data can be an important asset that not only keeps the operation ticking over but also drives informed decision making. Not only can good quality data help us to benchmark organisational (and individual) performance, it also helps us to spot trends and anticipate future customer needs. Managers and executives need reliable and accurate data to make tactical and strategic decisions—and in some cases this may lead to repeated requests for more and more data. We might find that a mini-industry is created in crafting internal “Management Information” reports, often involving triangulating data from multiple, disparate systems, with an associated risk of error. We may well initiate projects to automate the creation of reports so that we can get them to our stakeholders quicker, faster and in greater quantity.
