How do I put on-hold music onto my office phone?

March 14, 2007 4:21 AM

How do I put on-hold music onto my office phone?

I have a standard office phone here. What would I do to add on-hold music onto it?

posted by jacobean to technology (6 comments total)

We used a company called Voice on Hold (I think) to make voice overs for our office about all the cool dental things we did, the doctors qualifications, how friendly we were, etc.

What they sent us were CDs with those recordings and the thing you need... a special CD player that hooked into the phone line up in our attic.

We had a special phone repair guy who used to work for phone companies, but now takes care of phones inside businesses ( because you have to hire your own guy for othat or pay tons of money to the phone company, if they'll even agree to do it), and he installed the machine for us. The machines cost, but you can find a few on ebay by searching "music on hold" (which also gets you some weird albums. I don't remember what the whole voice on hold package was, but we decided their service was worth much more than the increase in cost. Free scripting, X number of free additions to our "library," we reviewed all the scripts and got to pick the voices before they were recorded.
posted by bilabial at 4:41 AM on March 14, 2007

Well "standard" phone system doesn't really tell us much. What kind of phone system is it? Does it allow for on-hold music or do you need to buy a card for it?

Assuming its on-hold capable, there should be an 1/8" phono jack (same size as a headphones jack) somewhere on the KSU (main phone unit) where you can plug in a radio or some other type of music player. Just get an1/8" x 1/8" phono cable and plug one end into the unit and one into the headphone jack on the radio/player.

Other units have built in pre-recorded standards. Others allow you to upload music onto the unit. All depends on what system you have.
posted by wile e at 4:42 AM on March 14, 2007

That's where hiring the phone tech guy helps Jacobean. I know that our cd player was plugged into our system in the attic, but I couldn't tell you what kind of system we had.
posted by bilabial at 6:42 AM on March 14, 2007

I've done this before. It does depend on your system but the exchange box (where the phone line comes in) that runs the system should have a 3.5mm line-in socket (looks like the headphone socket on an iPod). Get a cheap CD or mp3 player and a male-to-male 3.5mm jack lead to connect the two and off you go. Alternatively you could connect a computer playing iTunes or similar.

[This is a UK-based answer. You may have a difference if you are in the metric-hating USA]
posted by i_cola at 7:04 AM on March 14, 2007

I tried the old standard helloDirect.com, and apparently they've stopped handling it.

These guys may be able to help.
posted by Orb2069 at 10:14 AM on March 14, 2007

You could sing into the phone. :)
posted by WCityMike at 1:17 PM on March 14, 2007