by Lisa Alferieff, Chief Operating Officer 

Who says you need to listen to Kenny G or Barry Manilow when placed on hold? Not us.

I started at TCG in 2009 working on a software development project for the Department of the Treasury. Our team was geographically dispersed (most of us were telecommuters) and spent a fair amount of time on the phone. One day a colleague placed me on hold to answer another call. I instantly traveled back in time and to another country to the tune of “99 Luftballons.” The original German version, not the English one. I laughed. I had already noticed that my new company was slightly different in a variety of ways and this was just one more to add to the list. Instead of pulling off-the-shelf hold music, the management team had decided to select songs that they liked. Duh. Such a simple concept and yet one so rarely applied in other companies.

It’s the minor, deliberate, decisions like this that make TCG positively distinct from top to bottom and side to side. Now, if you prefer Opus No. 1 to hand-selected pieces, then you’ll be glad to know that “One hour of Cisco CallManager Default Hold Music” is on YouTube with 740K+ views and many fans. You won’t see me clicking “I like this” on that!