Purely out of curiosity...

[mandolin]

When you're on hold with a call center, why on Earth do they intermittently fake you out with that recorded voice that keeps telling you to "please hold" with the same exact wording every TWO MINUTES? With no useful information included like website, et al. I kind of get the recordings that tell people they can go to the website or give out hours because it might potentially thin out the queue. But the repeated useless admonishments to please hold?

It's not like you need to be told you have to wait, the elevator music is a pretty damn big clue. I can't figure out the point of this beyond irritating the people calling in further. Anyone know where this came from?

Comments

[patrickat.livejournal.com]

"All available representatives are assisting other callers. Your call is important to us. Please continue to hold and a representative will be with you shortly."

Sentence by sentence...

"All available representatives are assisting other callers."

We only have one person working the phones today.

"Your call is important to us."

But we really wouldn't care if you hung up now.

"Please continue to hold and a representative will be with you shortly."

We lie... unless you consider a 30-minute wait to be "shortly" like we do.

[jennies.livejournal.com]

I firmly believe they insert that voice-clip for the sole reason of putting callers to sleep while they listen to 30 otherwise-uninterrupted minutes of blandly muted muzak. :)

But I do hate the ones that stop the muzak, put you through to a ring tone, play the recording, and shunt you back to the muzak. Ring tones should mean I've finally fought my way to the front of the queue, not earned another two-minute-wake-up check. :P