Music on hold or MOH is the playing of recorded music while clients or customers who you cannot serve at the moment are on hold. A music on hold system is integrated into the telephone system via an audio jack and you should therefore, ensure that the telephone equipment that you buy is labelled ‘MOH’ for compatibility with your music on hold player. MOH is important in that you are able to pass your message across when callers are waiting such as reminding your customers/clients about the products/services you have on offer and it ensures that callers do not go away before they are served.
There are several sources of music for hold and you should therefore, ensure that your music on hold player is able to support most if not all of them. The music could come from radio. All you need to do is connect the local radio station via the MOH jack in your music on hold player. You should however, note that you will not have licence to play the music since radio stations themselves have to get usage licenses from the music title owners and there is therefore a risk of a fine (usually $1,500). Another disadvantage of getting your music for hold from radio is that you will have no control over the type of music played. There will be regular commercial breaks and there could even be a competitor’s commercial.
The telephone on hold music could come from off-the-shelf commercial CDs. This option is advantageous over radio in that you get to select the type of music, but you will need to pay for a license if the music owner had not gotten permission from the song’s title copyright owner and the song’s mechanical copyright owner. These are often expensive and difficult to obtain. The telephone on hold music could come from stock MOH CDs, which could have periodic voice-overs like ‘please stay on the line’ and ‘your call is important’ if you so wish. This option will come with the necessary license since the CD will be made specifically for a music on hold player, but will not help generate sales or provide information about the company while on-hold.
Your message on hold could be custom-designed MOH. This option is advantageous in that you get full control of the content and the music genre. This is similar to stock MOH CDs, the major difference being that you get to decide what to include in the content and you get to choose the genre. The program can be completely written and produced by an on-hold program company. You could even have an MP3 instead of a CD. The telephone on hold music could be Online on hold music where a software is loaded onto your computer and connected to your phone system for automatic content updates that are interspersed with your company’s information.
