Thanks to Signal Pro Jason for this tip!
No one likes to be on hold. Sitting on hold has become so reviled that there are whole industries devoted to making sure you don’t have to sit on hold. There are people who write live chat software, the software that calls you back when it’s your time in line, and if I had to guess someone is working on an AI right now that will work better than the awful ones they have now.
But if you have to…
If you have to wait on hold, you have two hopes for yourself at that moment. The first is that the on-hold music is relatively long. No one wants to hear the same music looping over and over. That probably annoys me more than the actual time spent on hold. The second hope is that the music is actually tolerable. Most on-hold music, frankly, isn’t terrible. But, wouldn’t it be nice to have on-hold music that actually slaps?
Opus No. 1
I present to you what is, for my money, the best on-hold music ever created:
There’s an interesting story here. Back in the late 1980s, Cisco was developing one of the first modern phone systems. Phone systems of the day relied on multiple cables in from the phone company and gigantic switching systems that no one seemed to know how to use. Cisco had a better idea. Instead of using the telephone network, why not use the internet?
Of course this all sounds so simple to us now, but in 1997 the World Wide Web, the system which we realistically think of as “the internet,” was still only four years old. The internet was a series of computers connecting large businesses, colleges, and military installations. It was barely reaching the consciousness of regular folks. Those folks mostly used AOL if they got online at all. And yet, Cisco was already thinking about how to use it for phone calls.
Of course, a modern business phone system needs the ability to put people on hold. And even then, on-hold generally meant music. In those days, you generally contracted with a separate provider to legally pump music into your office. IP phones were meant to save money, and Cisco didn’t want to negotiate with those other companies. So, they went a different way.
Just two high school buddies
Apparently, back in 1989, high school buddies Tim Carleton and Darrick Deel recorded the music you can hear above. They were just high-school buddies having fun. When Deel found himself later working on Cisco’s early IP phones, he realized there was a need for on-hold music. He reached back out to Carleton, and the most rockin’ on-hold music ever was born.
This music played on hold at Cisco’s corporate offices, and some accounts say that it was available to people who purchased Cisco’s IP phones. It became famous all on its own and it’s yet to be matched in terms of listenability on hold.
I don’t know about you but…
Personally that’s the kind of contribution I’d like to be known for. Yes it’s true that my byline is on about 12,000 articles here and in other places, but I’d be just as happy coming up with something that everyone thinks is cool and no one knows who invented it. So, tip of the hat to Carleton and Deel, who must be in their 50s by now, for creating something that will live forever!
