Messages on Hold That Make Every Wait Count
Turn hold time into something worth hearing. Choose an Australian voice, approve the script, and we load the finished audio onto your 3CX or hosted PBX.
Dead air. Beeps. A burst of canned music that cuts out mid-bar. That’s what most callers hear while they wait — and every one of them is a captive audience you’re not talking to. Messages on hold turn that gap into something worth hearing: what you do, where you are, what to have ready when someone picks up. SIP Connect writes it, voices it and loads it onto your phone system, from our office in Greensborough.
What has changed lately is how the audio gets made. You can now choose a voice from a set instead of booking a studio session, which turns a script change from a production into a small job.
Choose a voice, approve a script, hear it on your line
It runs in a set order, and nothing is recorded until you’ve signed off on the words.
Pick a voice.
We send you short samples of the options reading the same lines, so you’re comparing like with like rather than guessing from a name on a list.
Send the script, or just a brief.
Dot points are fine. If you’d rather we wrote it, tell us what your callers usually ask and we’ll draft the first version for you to mark up.
Approve the wording.
You read the final script and confirm it. An approved script is the only thing standing between a typo and a recording your customers hear all year.
We produce it and load it.
The voice track is mixed with a music bed, converted to the format your phone system expects, and put in place on your queues and greetings. You hear it on your own line before we call it finished.
Honest note: this is a produced service, not a self-serve generator. There is no download button yet — a person checks the audio before it goes anywhere near your phone system.
The voices you can choose from
Australian male and female voices across a range of registers: warm and conversational for a clinic, a gym or a family business, flatter and more corporate for a law firm or a wholesaler. British, American and neutral international accents sit in the set as well. Pace, emphasis and the pronunciation of the awkward words — your suburb, your surname, your product names — get sorted during production rather than left to chance.
Would you rather a human voice artist read it? Say so. We’re not going to push a synthetic voice on a business that wants a person.
Why on-hold messaging pays for itself
You have already paid for that call. The advertising that prompted it, the number it came in on, the wage of whoever eventually answers — all of it is spent by the time the caller is put on hold. Silence is the one moment in the whole journey where you spend money and say nothing.
Two things change when the wait has content in it. Callers hang up less, because silence reads as a dropped call while a voice reads as a queue that’s moving. And your team fields fewer of the same routine questions, because the recording has already answered them — opening hours, parking, which documents to have handy, the address of the second site. We’re not going to quote you a hang-up percentage from someone else’s study. Listen to your own hold music for two minutes and you won’t need one.
What makes a script work, and what makes it grate
On-hold audio fails for a small handful of reasons, and every one of them is fixable at the script stage rather than in the studio.
One idea per segment.
A short message, then music, then the next message. A caller who hears an unbroken monologue starts listening for a gap to hang up in.
Write for the ear, not the page.
Read the draft out loud. If you run out of breath in a sentence, the voice will too, and long noun-heavy clauses fall apart at telephone bandwidth.
Useful before promotional.
Hours, location, what to have ready, how to reach you another way. Sell in one segment out of three, not three out of three.
Never apologise on a loop.
‘Your call is important to us’ on repeat tells the caller precisely the opposite. Thank them once and move on.
Match it to your real hold times.
If your queue clears quickly, most callers only ever hear the first segment — so put the thing you most want said at the front, not in the big finish.
Music, and the licence most people miss
Playing music to callers on hold counts as a public performance under Australian copyright law, the same as playing it in your waiting room. Commercial music — anything you’d hear on the radio — needs a licence from APRA AMCOS, and that licence sits with your business as the one playing it, not with your phone provider.
There are two clean ways through. Hold an APRA AMCOS licence that covers music on hold, or use a production music bed licensed for this exact use, which avoids the question altogether. Tell us which way you want to go before we mix anything, because it changes what the track gets built on. We’re not lawyers, and we’d rather raise it now than have you find out by letter.
Loading it onto 3CX or a hosted PBX
On a modern system the hold audio isn’t one file doing one job. 3CX keeps a music-on-hold set that different queues can point at, so sales and accounts can hear different things, and the greeting your digital receptionist plays before the menu is a separate recording again. Hosted PBX platforms work the same way through their portal. We convert the files to what the system expects and put them where they belong, per queue if that’s what you want — our call queues guide covers how that gets arranged.
If we already run your phones, this is a change we make and test for you. If another provider does, that’s fine too — we hand over the finished files with a note on where each one goes. Microsoft Teams calling handles hold audio differently again, and what’s possible depends on how your tenant is built, so ask us and we’ll tell you what your setup will actually do rather than what the brochure says.
Keeping it current instead of stale
An on-hold message ages in public. A recording still promoting last December’s hours in March does more damage than silence, because it tells every caller that nobody here has checked anything in months. The fix is a rhythm rather than a project: refresh the seasonal segment ahead of Christmas and the new year, update whenever your hours, prices or services genuinely change, and pull a promotional segment the day the promotion ends.
Because the voice comes from a set rather than a booked session, a small change stays a small change. Same voice, same music bed, one segment swapped, and the rest of the track carries on sounding exactly as it did. Moved premises? That update belongs on the list too, alongside the rest of your communications relocation.
One local team for the audio and the line it plays on
On-hold audio earns its keep when the phone system underneath it is set up properly — calls landing in the right queue, a 1300 or 1800 number pointing callers at the right branch, and a hold experience that matches the greeting they just heard. We look after all of it from one office in Greensborough: one invoice, one number to call if something sounds wrong. No set-up fees, no long-term contracts, and if we can’t make the recording worth having, we’ll tell you straight.
Ask for a demo and hear how your business could sound. Send a recent bill for a free bill analysis at the same time and we’ll show you where the budget for it is already sitting in your current plan — or call 1300 747 266 and talk it through with a real person.
Frequently asked questions
How much do messages on hold cost?
There are no set-up fees and no long-term contracts. What it costs depends on what you want made, so ask for a demo and we’ll put a real figure in front of you in plain English before you commit to anything. A free bill analysis often finds the room for it inside what you already spend.
Is the voice a real person or AI-generated?
Either, and you choose. The voice options are synthetic — Australian male and female, warm through to corporate, plus a few international accents — and every track is produced, mixed and checked by a person here before it reaches your phone system. If you’d rather a human voice artist read the script, tell us and we’ll arrange that instead.
Do we have to tell callers the voice is AI-generated?
No Australian rule currently requires you to announce it. What does apply is ordinary consumer law: whatever the voice says about your hours, prices, guarantees or credentials has to be accurate. The line worth staying well clear of is a synthetic voice presenting itself as a named member of your staff — that is where a plain recording turns into something misleading.
Can you write the script for us?
Yes. Tell us what your callers ask most, what you want them to know, and anything you would never say — we draft it and send it back for you to mark up. Nothing is voiced until you’ve approved the final wording, and the script stays yours if you ever want to take it somewhere else.
Do I need a music licence for on-hold music?
If you play commercial music to callers, yes — it counts as a public performance in Australia and APRA AMCOS licenses it, with the licence sitting with your business rather than your phone provider. The alternative is a production music bed licensed for on-hold use, which avoids the question entirely. Tell us which you want before we mix the track.
Will it work with my phone system?
In almost all cases. We load on-hold audio onto 3CX and hosted PBX platforms as a matter of course, including a different message per queue. If another provider runs your phones, we supply the finished files in the format your system expects with a note on where each one goes.
Can different departments hear different messages?
Yes, on any system with proper call queues. Sales, accounts and support can each have their own hold audio, and your 1300 or 1800 number can route callers into the right queue before they hear a thing. Whoever is waiting for accounts shouldn’t be pitched a product they have already bought.
How often should we update the messages?
Around your business rather than the calendar: the seasonal segment before Christmas and the new year, and everything else whenever hours, services, locations or prices change. An out-of-date message is worse than no message at all, so when something moves, call 1300 747 266 and we’ll get the segment swapped.
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