MOH - I'm betting some of you youngsters out there are not familiar with that abbreviation. Stands for Music On Hold. Pardon me while I vent a bit. So, I'm on hold with a very reputable broadcast manufacturer (this story actually could relate to two of them, that I know of), one who takes audio very seriously. Their MOH audio is consisting of very relaxing piano music (not the repetitive chip stuff that I always hear), and about every 5 seconds, the audio goes into full blast white noise. I'm betting a number of you out there are suffering through this MOH garbage too. What happened to decent audio on hold? It's one of the reasons I still like to hang on to our internal phone systems, so I can have control over that kind of thing. I'm betting that once you enter into the phone world of VoIP, you no longer have control. Still, I miss the good ol' days of analog (1A2) phone systems, which 9 out of 10 times, provided excellent clarity for MOH.
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MOH
- Thread starter Brian Bowers
- Start date
I can't tell you how many businesses have horrible MOH! My doctor has the worst. It's extremely loud and distorted. Why does nobody notice and do something about it?
Thank you! I'm glad I'm not the only one noticing this stuff. Even back in the late 90's, and early 2000's, I had to complain to Harris (when I used to order broadcast equipment from them, when they were a distributor/vendor). They had one of the latest digital phone systems, which probably had a chip with one song on it, and I used to call them so much, and was put on hold so often, that that one song drove me CRAZY. Now if you've got broadcasters waiting on hold, who pay attention to this stuff, you might want to be a bit more concerned about what is on your MOH, or the quality of it. Just sayin'.
Why not use the MOH to promote your products?
Take it from an Engineer. When we need emergency tech support, the telephone is our best option. Email is far too slow with no guarantee that anyone will even see it.
Years ago the most popular MOH used to be either a radio station (local) or Muzak. Lately I don't hear either one. Has something changed regulation-wise that would prevent picking a local station for MOH or is it a financial thing?
Fully agree most MOH tend to alienate callers - especially the ones with non-stop advertising.
Fully agree most MOH tend to alienate callers - especially the ones with non-stop advertising.
Just going out on a limb here, but I'm guessing since now so many radio stations are using VoIP phones, that it's impossible to feed their radio station audio to the platform provider, for MOH.
There really is no 'provider' for MOH audio. It can be derived from a radio tuner, CD player, computer, a computer chip or any other audio source.
Platform Provider, meaning, VoIP computer mainframe, wherever (city, state, country) it may be located.
I worked in the office phone systems business for 17 years. From what I was always told, customers are responsible for obtaining the necessary music licenses for anything that they may put on their MOH channel, other than the few instrumentals that we provide with the systems (which were taken care of). AFAIK, piping a local radio station through it requires licenses, as well as the station's permission.
As far as noise goes, unfortunately it's still a fact of life when sending music through low-quality/low data rate VoIP and cellular circuits. It depends on the data rate, higher being better. Fax doesn't work well (or not at all) with an 8 kbps VoIP channel either. Non-talking communications is one of the few areas where analog is still superior, even on a 300-3000 Hz voice channel.
Your statement has never been more true Frank.
A friend of mine owns a well known broadcast device company. When he was on vacation, I stood-in to help with phone customer support. It blew my mind how many "Engineers" called to ask questions like: "How do I connect this to my (XXX) console?" Of course, I would reply with: Have you looked at the manual? The typical reply was startling: "No, I don't have time for that and why I'm calling you".
Rule #1 of Tech Support: NEVER tell the customer to read the manual. Brings threats of lawsuits, at least in the phone business.
Wait, a customer will sue a manufacturer for asking whether the customer referred to the manual? I know people sue at the drop of the hat, but I don't buy that statement. It would go beyond the term frivolous.
By that thinking, when the customer asked me where the relay contacts are, and I explained they're labeled on the back of the device K1, K2, etc., yet the "Engineer" was confused why relays would be called "K-". So, had I called him a lazy idiot, I'd be in jail by now.
Probably not in jail but most certainly out of a job.
Hell, it is so easy to get fired. I got fired once just for telling a customer (a favorite of the owner) he'd be next as soon as I finished with the current customer.
The phone systems business is extremely vulnerable to lawsuits. If the phones go out, so does the customer's business, and then lawsuits DO happen. And when you're a small company like we were, and many of our competitors also were in the pre-VoIP days, when a customer threatens a lawsuit, you listen.
Well, it depends on how you were "finishing" the customer.
I was changing his oil. And no, not THAT kind of oil.
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