VoIP phone system features, must of the spotlight shines on things that end users fall in love with, and can’t imagine working without (or how they managed before). We’re talking about featured like voicemail-to-email, live call forwarding, automatic call distribution, and so on.

However, there’s another member of the VoIP phone system feature All Star team that sometimes gets overlooked, even though it’s a game-changer compared to what existed before: music on hold.

Below are 3 best practices to help businesses exploit this opportunity, and transform placing callers on hold from a risk into an advantage:

1. Choose Soothing Music or Useful Information 

VoIP phone systems can be customized with either music or recorded messages.

If the decision is to go with music, then it must be royalty-free to avoid copyright issues, and it should be soothing and relaxing. So think “Relaxing Spa” or “Classical Favorites” instead of (with apologies to head bangers out there) heavy metal or hard rock.

If the decision is to go with a recorded message, then it’s important that the information is relevant, topical, and professionally communicated (e.g. clear and coherent). For example, businesses can highlight that their website has an extensive and easy-to-search help section, announce a recently-added service or product, and so on.

2. Rotate Music and Messages 

Regardless of whether the decision is to go with music or messages (or both), businesses should make sure that they change things up every month or so. It’s makes a bad impression when callers hear the same thing today that they did months ago, or maybe even years ago.

3. Automate the Process 

The biggest drawback to carrying out best practice #2 (rotate music and messages) is that, well, people are busy and it’s easy for a task like this to fall through the cracks. Fortunately, the process can be automated, which means one less item on the giant to-do list.

The Bottom Line 

With a conventional landline phone system, placing callers on hold was kind of like sending them to penalty box in a hockey game. They just had to hang around and listen to the sound of their own breathing, waiting to be released from purgatory. Or, they did what a lot of callers do: they hung up and headed to a competitor.

But with a VoIP phone system, placing callers on hold (either automatically or manually) isn’t a punishment. On the contrary, it’s an opportunity to make a positive impression and keep callers engaged.