Can hold music be changed?

Answered

18 Comments

  • Official comment
    Joey Barrett
    Zendesk Product Manager

    Hi Matt,

    Joey here from the Talk Product Team. Thanks for reaching out!

    There are several greeting types, from what you describe 'Wait' is the one you might want to change. The wait greeting plays in the scenario where a caller is waiting to get through to an agent and one or more agents are online and available but perhaps on another call.

    If you want to repeat options (e.g. press 1 for voicemail or press 2 to request a callback), I would recommend building this into one longer greeting file. Instead of having a short file of length 1 minute, create a file of length 5 minutes. At each minute interval (between music) drop in the voiceover advising the caller that they can press 1 for voicemail or 2 to request a callback or any other pertinent information. Bear in mind that the wait file will loop.

    Hold music (where a caller has been talking to an agent but the agent placed them on hold) can be used to market products or even advertise the fact that answers to commonly asked questions can be found on our website at 'help.yourwebsite.com' (in the scenario where you have Zendesk Guide / Gather).

    I have a lot of experience with editing audio files, and if you would like to jump on a call to discuss further I am happy to do so. You can email support@zendesk.com to take me up on my offer (be sure to include a copy of this comment so the agent knows to route the ticket to me!)

    An editing tool you could use to edit your current audio files.

    The format I recommend you save the audio as: 'Mono G711 MULaw'

    Right now, there is no feature to do this in product. We have noted this internally that there is an appetite for this feature. If this is something that ends up on a roadmap we will notify you here, currently there is no timeline for implementing this. 

    I hope this helps!

  • Chiaki Tuliao

    Hi there Jill,

    Yes, you can actually change your hold music by going to Admin > Channels > Voice > Numbers tab > Edit > select a new greeting next from the drop-down menu in the Settings tab, as shown below:

    Although it says in the article that its a greeting, you can actually add a file here, such as your music, as your wait/hold "greeting".

    From here, you can choose what type of greeting would you like to change. Once you have selected from the options above, you will now have the option to either record your greeting or upload a file. :)

    To know more about changing your voice greetings, an article can be found here: Managing outgoing greetings.

    Hope this answers your question. :) 

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  • Marylou Scott-Smith

    If you upload a file with different hold music, do you have to include your voice greeting on that same file?

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  • Nicole Saunders
    Zendesk Community Manager

    Hi Marylou, 

    To clarify, do you want it to be a voice greeting and then music, or just music? 

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  • Marylou Scott-Smith

    Hi Nicole, 

    We have several different brands and have different voice greetings for each of them.  I would like to continue with the voice greetings and simply change the music that plays while the customer is in queue or on hold.

    Quite a few customers have commented that the find the hold and queue music both loud and annoying so we would love to change it, while keeping our voice greetings intact.

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  • Nicole Saunders
    Zendesk Community Manager

    Thanks for the clarification. I updated Chiaki's post above so that the link is live; that article includes instructions on how to upload a WAV or MP3 file to customize the recording. 

    I suggest giving that a try, and let us know if you run into any trouble. 

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  • Jose Resendiz

    Is there a size limitation to a file, particularly a wait greeting that may include music and wait messages for up to 10 min which is our max answer wait time before it goes to voicemail?

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  • Nicole Saunders
    Zendesk Community Manager

    Hey Jose -

    According to the article linked above, yes, there is a size limit: 

    "Both WAV and MP3 files are supported with a maximum file size of 10 MB. For Wait greetings, we recommend a length of about 10-15 seconds."

    Let us know if you have any additional questions. 

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  • Nathalie F.

    Dear support team,

    We would like to change the on hold music. I saw we can upload files to change the music, however I'm consumed about copyright. 

    Are we allowed to upload any file and use if for the on hold music? Or do we need to request a licence before we can do that?

     Do you also offer different on hold music except for the default one?

    Thank you

    Best,

     

    Nathalie  

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  • Jessie Schutz
    Zendesk Customer Care

    Hi Nathalie! Welcome to the Community!

    This is an interesting question. I did a little bit of digging here, and I found this via Google search: https://www.americancreative.com/the-laws-and-regulations-governing-music-on-hold/

    The gist of the article is that, unless the music you're uploading is specifically public domain or otherwise doesn't require a license (ie: custom hold music you have commissioned), you will need to contact the copyright holder(s) for the music you wish to use, or use royalty free music for which you can purchase a license online. The article I linked provides some more detailed information and resources you can look into for more information.

    Hope that helps!

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  • Beth Haberski

    Is it safe to assume that the hold/wait music is played in a loop until it can be routed to an agent/vm/etc?

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  • Jenni Kovachevich

    Hi Beth!

    That's correct--the hold music will be played in a loop until answered by an agent or if it reaches maximum queue time and routes to Voicemail. 

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  • Γεώργιος Ν.

    Hello,

     

    can we add more than one file for waiting music? we are thinking that because we dont want to have only music but also several spots of our brand.

     

    Ty

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  • Nicole Saunders
    Zendesk Community Manager

    Hey G. Novas -

    You can upload multiple files for greetings (hold music) but you can only choose one greeting for each area you want it present in the IVR menu. If you want multiple spots, I would suggest putting together an audio file that is effectively one long track with the spots interspersed.

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  • Tracy Scobba

    We would really like to remind callers periodically that they can leave a voicemail or a callback during the hold music ... I see that we could record custom hold music with the prompts interspersed, but an option in Zendesk to play the voicemail and callback prompts periodically would be ideal.

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  • Anna

    Agree with Tracy. We would like to do the same thing as our wait time is set to the maximum (20 minutes) and customers get frustrated with longer wait times. We want to remind them while they are waiting on hold that they can press 1 to redirect to voicemail or they can press 2 to request a callback when an agent is free. 

    We are looking for a workaround for this and the only recommendation was to record our own wait greeting which would need to include both wait music and the greeting reminder at the 5 minute mark. Being able to select wait time reminders at select intervals during the wait time would be incredibly beneficial for us.

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  • Brett Bowser
    Zendesk Community Manager

    Thanks for taking the time to share this with us Anna and Tracy!

    I'll be sure to pass this feedback along to our Talk team so they're aware of this need.

    Cheers!

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  • Matt Walley

    I see that someone made the suggestion of repeating menu options during hold. Was this feature request implemented? Our business is in a similar situation where customers can be on hold for an extended period of time and a periodic repeat of menu options would be a great reminder to them. 

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