Can the people on the other end of the phone hear me singing along?
December 12, 2022 4:04 PM   Subscribe

When I'm on hold and they play music I, as any reasonable person does, sing along. Can the person who put me on hold hear me singing?

♬ USAA! ♬
posted by The corpse in the library to Technology (9 answers total) 4 users marked this as a favorite
 
Probably not. If they had you on mute then they can hear you but then you would not hear music. There are however people who monitor call queues that could be listening in and they generally hear everything the customer says the entire time. This is for "quality assurance" as well as old fashioned spying on employees.

You singing is the least weird thing they will hear today =)
posted by soelo at 4:19 PM on December 12, 2022 [5 favorites]


i won't say it's impossible but as far as i know, no commercial telephone system i've ever worked on had such a feature
posted by glonous keming at 4:46 PM on December 12, 2022


Best answer: yeah, if your call is monitored for quality and shit, the whole call is recorded, including both sides of any holds.

(source: have worked in that business and have built actual call recording databases)

In the system I worked on, hold time was categorized as hold time and no one listened to it because why would you listen to hold time? but if I did ever listen to hold time and heard someone singing I would be delighted.
posted by Sauce Trough at 5:01 PM on December 12, 2022 [21 favorites]


Mute and sing, easy peasy
posted by St. Peepsburg at 5:09 PM on December 12, 2022 [1 favorite]


Best answer: I was not on hold, but I was transferred to an automated phone system in the middle of a customer service call. When the automated system asked me to create a new password, I said "awww, but I don't wanna make a new passworrrd" in the most obnoxious whiny baby voice possible. That's when the person I had just been talking to popped back on the line to tell me that I didn't need to create a new password, I could still use my old one. I was mortified and have kept my mouth shut on call centre calls ever since.
posted by Rora at 6:11 PM on December 12, 2022 [16 favorites]


The systems I've used do not record or have a way to listen in to the caller while they are on hold. They only record the agent's line (so if they put you on hold to transfer, the two agents talking about you would be recorded, but no one would hear or record you singing to the hold music).

Now, someone may still pop back in on your unexpectedly and catch the end of your performance, but other than that, you're safe.
posted by Garm at 6:53 PM on December 12, 2022


Best answer: The new USAA song is awesome! I chat about it with every rep I talk to. How could you not sing along after hours and hours of it on repeat while you’re on hold?!
posted by bendy at 8:37 PM on December 12, 2022 [2 favorites]


I use that time to vent about whatever company I'm on hold with and use swear words -- they would be lucky to catch me singing!
posted by alwayson_slightlyoff at 9:28 PM on December 12, 2022 [1 favorite]


Best answer: Yes; when I was training to work in a call center many years ago they piped in the "your call is being monitored" audio to us, and we could hear the hold music and whatever was going on on the customer's end (we didn't hear anything interesting).
posted by AzraelBrown at 9:18 AM on December 13, 2022 [1 favorite]


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