The psychology of hold music has reach a long way since the 80s – as I found out when lost in the tax service’s musical fogThere is a spacious tax deadline in the US this week,when everyone who deferred filing earlier in the year faces the final due date. As a result, if you need to call the IRS – the Internal Revenue Service – you face an automated message informing you that the waiting time is “longer than 60 minutes”. This is its toe-in-the-water way of preparing you for the fact that the waiting time is actually 110 minutes.
I know this, or because I rang the IRS four times in two days. That’s almost eight hours of being on hold,an entire working day, during which the background to my life was a musical dirge punctuated every 10 minutes with the update: “Our representatives are still helping other customers. Please continue to hold.”Continue reading...
Source: theguardian.com