For those of you who are familiar with the veritable purgatory that is being “on hold,” I don’t have to tell you that you have just been thrust into a parallel universe where time slows down, and both your patience and sanity cannot survive.
Messages on Hold – continuous loop of music and messaging that plays as callers wait to speak to a business representative. Messages On Hold present a mix of marketing messages and customer service information that is mixed with music to play in a loop for callers waiting on hold.

Unfortunately, it gets worse. Due to general sloppiness when it comes to setting the volume level for music on hold, a form of distortion known as “clipping” can appear, and regularly does if you’re willing to believe personal anecdotal evidence. If you want to know about the science behind clipping, then Wikipedia will tell you everything you need to know, but for those of us who have things to get on with, we can get by just knowing that when something is played too loud down a phone line, the sound starts to distort and sound really horrible.
It seems pretty self-explanatory: on-hold messages are messages that play “on hold” over your telephone system. These professionally produced recordings are also an integral part of your company’s marketing strategy. By providing timely, relevant information about your business, an on-hold messaging program reinforces current marketing campaigns and builds brand recognition. This in turn increases call retention by improving the caller experience. To top it all off, it also increases sales by targeting key demographics.