What Hold Music Should Your Franchise Use? [Quiz]

As Hold Music Marks Its 60th Birthday, Answering Service Care Highlights Why It Still Matters

Hold music turns 60 this year, and for businesses, it’s a cause for celebration. Silence may be golden, but hold music reassures callers that they’re still connected and discourages them from hanging up to move on to a competitor. Hold music that pleases callers — or at least doesn’t irritate them — is vital to customer experience. 

Answering Service Care, which has a quiz to guide hold music selection, can help franchises walk that fine line with finesse, steering them toward their optimum hold music choices and then legally obtaining that music for them.

Take The Hold Music Quiz Below!

Answering Service Care, or ASC, has been deftly handling customer contacts every day for 52 years, almost as long as hold music has been around. The audio feature was patented in 1966 by Alfred Levy, as documented by The New York Times and National Public Radio. Levy was long-winded and persuasive in his patent application, as noted by NPR. “Courteous telephone practice requires that a held caller be assured at reasonable intervals that the party to whom he wishes to speak still is busy, but the pressure of her duties may prevent the operator from so advising the incoming caller so that he may be bereft of even this small consolation,” he wrote.

ASC is one of many business organizations that agree with Levy on the importance of mollifying callers. For instance, that’s a central mission of the Experience Marketing Association (formerly the On Hold Messaging Association), which gives annual awards for the best on-hold experiences, as NPR reported. Holds gone wrong, the association’s leader said, include “small loops of music that repeat over and over at short intervals and make you aggravated that you’ve heard it three or four or five times.” A Wall Street Journal article emphasizes that businesses should give hold music more thought. And American Creative, which develops on-hold programming, says an appropriate approach can reduce call abandonment by 90%.

ASC’s National Hold Music Survey 

“It’s really difficult to overstate the role of hold music,” says Logan Shooster, ASC’s vice president of strategic growth. “We learned that in our research, which includes a national survey we released this year.” That survey, which compiled results from 2,000 American adults, presented findings relevant for franchises. Ten are listed below. 

1. The average American caller spends 41 minutes on hold each month, or nearly a full workweek over a year’s time. 
2. The average American caller will spend 26 days of his or her life on hold. 
3. Cumulatively, Americans’ hold time adds up to more than 2.8 billion hours per year. Using the average hourly wage, that total represents roughly $83 billion in lost productivity.
4. Numbers vary by location. North Dakotans report an average of 128 minutes per month on hold. Idaho and Washington residents waited an average of 73 minutes monthly on hold; Delaware (63 minutes) and California (58 minutes) were fourth and fifth. 
5. More than 60% of respondents say hold music influences their opinion about a brand. That number hits 76% among 35- to 44-year-olds, a coveted consumer demographic. Half of the 55-and-older respondents say hold music affects their view of a brand.  
6. Nearly 25% of the respondents say a business’s hold music directly defines its identity.
7. Five percent of respondents have developed a negative opinion about a company solely because of its hold music, a small but mighty negative.
8. A quarter of the folks surveyed favor nostalgic throwback music, and 8% prefer silence over any music.
9. Elton John was the most favored vocalist, followed by The Beatles, Queen, Ed Sheeran and Coldplay.
10. The most frustrating vocalists were Taylor Swift, followed by Beyoncé, Snoop Dogg, Lizzo and Drake.

ASC Connects with Humans

Answering Service Care’s mission is to connect consumers with a knowledgeable, helpful human ASAP and keep them content if there is a delay. Its well-informed agents answer phone calls, texts and live chats 24/7, when franchises are closed after regular business hours, on weekends, holidays — at all times. 

Speaking with a real person is particularly important in this era of artificial intelligence call handling, per a Consumer Reports survey.  

And that human touch is where ASC shines, Shooster says. “Our agents receive training on every brand and service that they field communications for. When a short hold is unavoidable, customers hear music that is appropriate to each franchise’s particular demographic.”

Take ASC’s quick, four-question quiz to find the ideal music genre for your business, whether it’s   Instrumentals or Pop/Dance Energy … or one of two other categories. 

For more information about the answering service, visit ASC’s website.