Hold Music Substitution
Having just spent the better part of an hour working my way through various phone trees and listening to a metric crapload of insipid hold music, I realized that there’s a huge product opportunity just waiting for someone to exploit. I don’t have the engineering skills to describe it for a patent, let alone make one, so I’m going to toss this into the public sphere in the hopes that somebody takes it and runs with it. If you become a multi-zillionaire off this idea, then bully for you! I hope you’ll remember me when that time comes with a nice cushy spot in your web division or at least a bunch of stock options, but if not, at least the world will be a slightly better place thanks to the two of us.
What I want is an office phone that’s also a iPod dock. It would charge the iPod when docked, and also be able to play through the speakerphone, handset, or headset. And here’s the really useful part: it mutes the incoming signal when there’s hold music and plays the iPod. When it detects a human voice, it pauses the iPod and passes the incoming signal through. If the hold music comes back, it goes back to blocking the incoming music and plays its own.
In other words, it would let me define my own hold music, rather than have to tolerate what someone else thinks is soothing. I would pay an exorbitant premium for that product, and there’s no way I’m the only one. So somebody get right on that, would you?
