It's the only song Alex Cornell has ever written. Cornell was one of the co-founders of UberConference, and in addition to being a designer, is a singer and guitar player who had always found songwriting frustrating. "Then I just came to it one day," he says. "I just wanted to write a pleasant melody designed to be heard over the phone." With encouragement from Walker, Cornell started messing around with the lyrics. He wrote and recorded it in one night, in 2012, as a voice note on his phone — and thus, this self-aware hold song was born, and lives on, seven years later.
If it is a genre, hold music, it's fair to say, is a troubled one with few hits. It's not really meant to be loved or even listened to — it's meant to communicate something specific: Don't hang up. (Cornell makes this plea specifically at the end of his song.) Silence is believed to be a death knell for phone calls — people will simply think the line is dead and hang up. This is true even on non-hold calls; it's why phone companies transmit something called a "comfort tone" over phone lines, a barely audible synthetic noise that signals a connection is still there.

If you need a more advanced configuration, you can set up call menu options with our Virtual Receptionist feature, for no additional charge. Call menu options enable you to play helpful messages like hours and location, transfer callers to voicemail or to a live receptionist, route callers to specific team members (customer service, sales, etc). Our wizard will guide you through the set-up process. It couldn’t be easier.
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