Don’t Forget the On-Hold Messages

Changing phone systems is never easy. Whether you’re replacing an on-site PBX or moving off-site to a hosted VOIP provider, there will be challenges. A common problem is the lack of understanding of how the music message on-hold plays.

We recently received a call from a health department administrator who was very frustrated with her telephone service provider. It seemed her new off-site VOIP service provider couldn’t figure out how to play her custom on-hold messages the way she wanted them played: in a constant rotation. Each time she pressed the hold button, the messages would start at the beginning. Her callers were missing 90% of her messages!

Another director with an off-site VOIP system signed a three-year contract before discovering that there was no way she could update the messages on-hold during a public health emergency. She needed to have that ability and the messages needed to play in constant rotation rather than from the beginning each time. Needless to say, it was a messy process for her to back out of the deal, but it had to be done.