Put Me Back On Hold!!!

There was a time, not in this decade or the current century…but there was a time, back in the 1990′s that I experienced the BEST user experience for being on hold. I even told the Customer Service Rep to put me back on hold!

Stop and ask yourself, what could possibly make a user experience so great from being on hold that a person would prefer to sit on hold instead of having their issue resolved? And this was for a Fortune 100 company!!!

Now to add another ingredient to this user experience pie…the telephone hold music/service was for a company called……………………………….Microsoft.   Yup.   I called Microsoft with a headset question and the experience was the BEST user experience for a telephone wait system.

What made this user experience so outstanding that more than ten years later I am thinking of it, I remember the company and now blogging about it?

1. It was a live person on the hold channel,

2. The person would play great, upbeat songs while waiting,

3. The live person/Disc Jockey would come on after the song and give an update;

   “Those of you waiting for hardware support, there are now 8 of you waiting with the longest person in que waiting for 5 minutes”

   “Those of you waiting for video game support, there are 12 of you waiting with the longest person in que waiting for 9 minutes”

   “Those of you wait………..”

   “I know that the representatives are making progress towards answering all of your calls but while we wait, here’s another tune by XYZ band!!!

4. The music was upbeat/tempo/positive

5. The DJ would update after each song and was upbeat/positive

This is/was a great user experience service!!!!Leave a comment here if you know of this service being used or of another great similar service!

The Best Phone Hold Wait Service

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The results are in from last week’s poll question and the results are pretty astounding:

• 90% of 200 votes were split between the frustration of calling a government office for an answer and the long tailed voice message recording
• Everyone can customize their greeting, why not customize the ending of the message? Eliminate the message, shorten the directions, or just go to beep?  (remember the phone answering machines…we never left directions on how to hold on or push one….just a silly/clever message).
• The astounding part…the phone carriers can do something about there messages. But we have to demand it!

Pick the Most Frustrating/Dreaded User Experience

The last poll was very revealing.  An overwhelming number of respondents voted that eBooks are worth less money than hard copy books.

Let us know your thoughts on this poll!

eBooks: Fair Price or Rip Off Price?

In traditional books, there are so many middle men involved that it drives up the cost of the book. There’s the author, the publishers, the distributors, the paper, the binding, etc. etc.

With an eBook, you simply need to convert the file to a .PDF file. Now you eliminate all of the middle men. However, should the price of the eBook be a bargain price because of the removal of the middle men? Or is the content still worth the same when the middle men where in place?