America Online wants to make calling its customer service line a more pleasant experience, but AOL's success may depend on your musical taste -- and your patience.
In the past month, the service has started forcing callers to listen to a "special message" from a selected recording artist -- in early November it was TLC and currently it's LeAnn Rimes -- who instructs everyone to "listen to the menu carefully prior to making your selection."
Tracks of the singers' latest songs play in the background, and if you're put on hold during the call, the artist returns to urge callers to buy the album of the music "you've been enjoying during this call."
"This is the beginning of what we think will be a series of celebrity greetings and promotional music from certain bands and artists," AOL spokesman Nicholas Graham said. "It's an effort to make the phone service more interesting and more current and also to make it a more pleasant experience when customers contact AOL."
Rimes did the voice-overs in October after she recorded a trio of songs on video from her new album for an AOL feature called "AOL Sessions."
For now, the greeting is heard only by callers to the main toll-free line, 1-800-827-6364, which receives the majority of the 350,000 calls AOL customer service reps field each day, Graham said.
The arrangement did not involve any payment to Rimes for her voice or to AOL for the novel product placement, said Ed Bunker, whose Los Angeles firm, No Problem Marketing, handles Rimes' record label, Curb Records. Furthermore, despite the fact that AOL Time Warner owns Warner Brothers, which distributes Rimes' records, those involved insist the voice-overs won't only be artists within the AOLTW stable.
"It's nice for AOL customers to hear a familiar voice they recognize, and it's additional exposure for LeAnn," Bunker said. "In this day and age, exposure wherever you can get it is good because the business is changing very rapidly."
AOL may be the first company to use this gimmick on a customer service line, but there is precedent for famous voices popping up in odd places. In New York City, taxi riders are instructed by Joan Rivers and Arsenio Hall to buckle their seat belts and take their receipt.
Bunker expects more companies to follow AOL's lead.
"Artists are a great way for companies to delineate themselves from other companies, to set themselves from the pack," he said. "It's more added value for the company."
