While they wait, your phone system keeps talking. Chosen music and a professional voice fill that time, inform, and give the feeling that someone is about to pick up.
The same production covers the pre-answer greeting and the phone welcome message: what the caller hears before being connected.
And if your brand has a sonic identity, your on hold messaging becomes its natural extension.
A few on-hold productions from our studio, in different registers. Listen on headphones or through a phone speaker: you'll be closer to real listening conditions.
Corporate, calm
Slow pace, reassuring voice: company switchboards, firms, public offices.
Corporate, more upbeat
Same frame, more drive: an approachable company that stays serious.
Retail, energetic
Sustained energy, offer up front: shops, services, points of sale.
Another voice, in English
For calls from abroad: on-hold in your callers' language.
The two look alike, but they don't play at the same moment and don't do the same job.
The voicemail greeting kicks in when nobody answers. It announces, informs, directs, then makes way for the beep. It's a spoken message, covered on the IVR and phone greeting page.
On hold messaging plays while your caller waits, once the call has already been taken. It's a continuous backdrop: background music over which spoken messages return at regular intervals. Your hours, a piece of news, your website address, an invitation to hold a moment longer.
The distinction matters, because the wait is the only moment your caller has nothing else to do but listen to you.
A good on-hold goes unnoticed. It fills the time, informs, and gives the feeling that someone is about to pick up.
Pace first. On hold, you speak more slowly than in a commercial. Your caller is already a little annoyed at waiting: a hurried voice only adds to the tension.
Mixing next. The phone's bandwidth is narrow, it cuts the lows and the highs. A recording made for video sounds poor down a phone line. The mix is done for this specific channel, with the voice well above the music, otherwise the message gets lost in the background.
Tone finally. It's your company speaking, not an automated announcement. A steady human voice shows the consideration you have for the person waiting.
Playing a commercial track on a phone system amounts to a public performance. Like any public performance, it falls under copyright and related rights, and requires the corresponding licenses from the collecting societies that manage those rights.
That's why a professional on-hold isn't cobbled together from the office playlist. The studio works with music whose broadcast rights are cleared upstream, which spares you from having to investigate the question yourself.
For your specific case, especially if your phone system already plays music today, check with the relevant societies or your usual counsel.
Not freely: playing a track on a phone line is a public performance, subject to copyright and related rights. Our productions use music whose broadcast rights are cleared for this use.
The formats your phone system or carrier requires: tell us your equipment when ordering, we handle the conversion.
Yes. For a switchboard that takes calls from abroad, the on-hold is produced in your callers’ language too.
Through the IVR and phone greeting page: describe your on-hold need in the form, choose the voice, the studio produces your file.
Yes: pre-answer greeting, welcome message and one-off announcements follow the same path as the on-hold: music, professional voice and a mix to phone standards.
The principle is the same as for a voicemail greeting. You describe the need, you choose the voice, the studio produces the file in the format your phone system expects.
Ordering, delivery formats and the details of the service live on the IVR and phone greeting page. Describe your on-hold need there: the studio comes back with the voice and a mock-up.