Turn Hold Time Into Selling Time
Silence tells a caller they have been forgotten. On-hold messaging tells them what else you do, when you are open, and that someone is coming. Generate it yourself with the text-to-speech tool included in Summit Hosted PBX, or have it professionally produced by Evolved Sound.
- Talk to someone who can fix it, not just log it
- Internet, phones and mobile on one bill
- We tell you what you need, not what we would rather sell
Overview
Every business puts callers on hold. The question is what they hear while they wait. Dead silence makes a caller wonder whether the line has dropped, and a fair share of them hang up and try someone else. A default beep or a burst of unlicensed radio is not much better.
On-hold messaging replaces that gap with something useful: your trading hours, your website, the new service you have just launched, the answer to the question half your callers ring to ask. It is the one piece of advertising your customer has actually chosen to listen to, and it plays to people who have already picked up the phone to buy from you.
Summit gives you two ways to get it, and both load straight into your Summit phone system. If you are on our Hosted PBX, write the script yourself and generate the audio in minutes with the built-in text-to-speech generator. Otherwise, hand the whole job to Evolved Sound, the Australian audio production house we work with for custom voice and music. Either way, we handle the part that usually goes wrong: getting the file onto your phone system in the right format, on the right queues, at the right volume.
Key Benefits
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Fewer Callers Hang Up
A caller who hears nothing assumes nothing is happening. A caller who hears your voice, your offers and a reason to wait stays on the line longer. Reducing abandoned calls in your queue is the cheapest lead generation available to a business that already spends money making the phone ring.
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Advertising to a Captive, Willing Audience
Your on-hold audio reaches people who rang you on purpose. There is no cheaper or better qualified audience for a message about your other services, a seasonal promotion or a referral programme.
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Answer the Same Question Once
Most businesses field the same handful of questions all day: opening hours, parking, whether you bulk bill, where to send documents, what to bring to an appointment. Put those answers on hold and a share of your callers have what they need before a staff member picks up.
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Sounds Like a Bigger Business
Professional greetings, a consistent voice and licensed music make a five-person operation sound established. It is one of the few upgrades that changes how a business is perceived on the very first interaction, and it costs less than a single staff hour.
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Legal, Licensed Music
Playing commercial radio or a track off a streaming service down your phone line is a copyright problem, not a shortcut. Both options we offer use audio that is cleared for the purpose, so your hold music is not a liability.
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Change It Whenever You Like
Trading hours over the Christmas break, a new location, a temporary phone number, a price change. On-hold audio is not a set-and-forget asset, and both routes let you refresh the message as the business changes rather than leaving last year's promotion playing.
Text-to-Speech or Custom Production?
The two options solve the same problem at different levels of polish, and plenty of Hosted PBX customers use both: text-to-speech for the messages that change often, produced audio for the main greeting and hold loop.
Summit Text-to-Speech
- Included with Hosted PBX
- Generate audio from a script inside your Hosted PBX service, no separate supplier or purchase order
- Live in minutes
- Type the script, pick a voice, generate, and we load it onto your queues
- Free to change
- Rewrite the script as often as the business changes, at no extra cost
- Choice of voices and accents
- Including Australian English, so your greeting does not sound imported
- Good enough for the everyday
- Trading hours, holiday closures, temporary notices and internal queue messages
Choose this when: You are on Summit Hosted PBX and you want it working today, the message will change often, or the budget is nil
Custom Production by Evolved Sound
- Real voice artists
- Professionally recorded by a human being, directed to suit your brand
- Scriptwriting included
- Copywriters who write for the ear rather than the page, which is a genuinely different skill
- Licensed music beds
- Music chosen and cleared for phone use, mixed properly under the voice
- Multi-language options
- Useful if a real share of your callers are more comfortable in another language
- Built for the front door
- Your main greeting, IVR prompts and hold loop, the audio every caller hears
Choose this when: The phone is your front door and the first ten seconds of the call need to sound like the business you actually are
Our recommendation: if you are on Hosted PBX, start with text-to-speech so no caller ever hears silence again, then have Evolved Sound produce your main greeting and hold loop once you know what the script should say. You will have learnt from the interim version what your callers actually need to hear, which makes the produced audio better and the money go further. Talk it through with us on 1300 049 749 and we will tell you which one your business needs.
How It Works
- 1 Work out what the caller needs to hear
Work out what the caller needs to hear
We go through your call flow with you: the main greeting, the after-hours message, each queue, and the hold loop. Different points in the call need different messages, and most businesses have more places for audio than they realise.
- 2 Choose your production route
Choose your production route
Text-to-speech for speed and for anything that changes often, Evolved Sound for the audio your callers hear first. If you go the produced route, we introduce you and they take the scripting from there.
- 3 Write or approve the script
Write or approve the script
Keep it short, useful and free of hold-time cliches. We are happy to review a draft before it goes anywhere near a microphone or a generator.
- 4 We load it onto your phone system
We load it onto your phone system
File format, sample rate, volume levelling and which queues it plays on are our job, not yours. Getting this wrong is why so much on-hold audio ends up too quiet, distorted or playing in the wrong place.
- 5 Refresh it when the business changes
Refresh it when the business changes
New hours, new service, new promotion. Text-to-speech changes are immediate. Produced audio can be updated in segments so you are not paying to re-record the whole loop.
Features
Message Types
- Main greeting
- : The first thing every caller hears, before the IVR menu or a ring group
- IVR menu prompts
- : Clear, consistently voiced options so callers pick the right department first time
- Hold and queue messages
- : What plays while a caller waits, with position or wait announcements where your queue supports it
- After-hours message
- : Your hours, your website and what to do in an emergency, instead of an unanswered ring
- Holiday and closure messages
- : Scheduled to play across a shutdown period and stop on their own
- Voicemail greetings
- : Company, department and per-extension greetings that match the rest of the call
Production Options
- Text-to-speech generator
- : Script-to-audio inside Summit Hosted PBX, with a choice of voices and accents
- Professional voice artists
- : Human recording, brand-appropriate direction, via Evolved Sound
- Scriptwriting
- : Copy written specifically for on-hold audio
- Licensed music
- : Cleared music beds mixed under the voice at a level that survives a phone line
- Multi-language recordings
- : Where your caller base needs it
- Segmented updates
- : Change one message without re-recording the whole loop
Delivery and Management
- Loaded by us
- : We install the audio onto your Summit Hosted PBX, SIP or Teams Calling service
- Correct audio format
- : Encoded and levelled for telephony, not left as a web-quality file
- Time-based playback
- : Different audio inside business hours, after hours, weekends and public holidays
- Per-queue targeting
- : Sales, support and accounts can each play their own message
- Unlimited script changes
- : On Hosted PBX text-to-speech, at no additional cost
- One point of contact
- : Summit manages the phone system and the audio in it, whoever recorded it
Use Cases
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Medical Practices and Clinics
Dentists & GPsHold time in a busy practice is unavoidable, and half the calls ask the same thing: are you taking new patients, do you bulk bill, what do I bring, where do I park. Answering those on hold clears the reception queue and gets callers off the phone faster and happier.
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Legal Firms and Accountants
Lawyers & AccountantsThe first ten seconds of a call to a professional services firm sets the fee expectation. A produced greeting with a consistent voice reads as a firm that has its act together. On-hold messaging is also a natural place to mention services existing clients do not know you offer, which is where a good deal of professional services revenue actually comes from.
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Retail and Hospitality
Hospitality & TourismTrading hours, public holiday changes, delivery areas, whether you take bookings. These change constantly and callers ring to check them constantly. Text-to-speech is ideal here, because a Hosted PBX customer can rewrite the message the moment the hours change.
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Trades and Field Services
TradiesWhen the whole team is on the tools, the phone is answered late or not at all. An after-hours and overflow message that tells a caller when they will be called back, and where to leave the details, is the difference between a booked job and a caller ringing the next number down the list.
Your situation not on this list? Tell us what you run or call 1300 049 749 and we will tell you honestly whether we can help.
Not sure which option is right for your business?
Book a short call with one of our network specialists. Tell them how your business actually runs and they will tell you which access technology suits it, which ones do not, and why. If the cheaper option is the right one, they will say so.
Why Choose Summit for On-Hold Messaging
- 01
The Audio and the Phone System Come From One Place
Most on-hold messaging is bought from an audio company and then thrown over the fence to whoever runs the phones. That handover is where files end up in the wrong format, at the wrong volume, or on the wrong queue. We run your voice service, so the audio is our responsibility right through to the caller's ear.
- 02
A Real Production Partner, Not a Side Hustle
We do not pretend to be an audio studio. For custom work we bring in Evolved Sound, an Australian production house that does this properly, with voice artists, scriptwriters and licensed music. You get a specialist for the recording and a carrier for the network, which is the right way around.
- 03
No Hosted PBX Customer Has Any Excuse For Silent Hold
Text-to-speech comes with our Hosted PBX service, so if your phone system is already ours, the only thing standing between your callers and a useful message is a script. Start there today, and upgrade the audio that matters when you are ready.
- 04
One Bill, One Support Number
Your internet, phone system, mobiles and the audio playing in your call queues all sit on one Summit account with one support team behind them. When you want the message changed, you ring the same number you always ring.
Other services businesses pair this with
Bundle them on one bill →Why Australian Businesses Choose Summit Internet
The Summit Team have always been a pleasure to work with; we highly recommend their services. Thank you for the continued support.
Paul Braithwaite
3 months ago
We recently moved our dental practice over to Summit for phone services, and the experience has been excellent from start to finish. The team has been responsive, professional, and incredibly helpful throughout the entire setup process. The transition was smooth, any issues were addressed promptly, and communication was always clear and efficient. Reliable phones and internet are essential for a busy practice like ours, and Summit has delivered exactly that. A special thank you to Michael for his patience and ongoing assistance during the transition. Highly recommend Summit to any business looking for reliable service and great customer support.Read more
Elli Darabi
3 months ago
The best service !!! Got issue fixed out by Greg ^^
白大倫
3 months ago
The whole team at Summit have been great from the initial onboarding to the rapid responses from Max when we need to make changes or additions to our services. Can't recommend them enough!
Aaron Klaver
3 months ago
As the I.T. Manager for Hydronic Systems Australia, Summit helps provide me and our companies with consistently stable Business Grade Internet, backed up by a dedicated Fixed Wireless Broadband connection. They also saved us a serious amount of money on our mobile phone bills. We have had no serious issues, and our business has been rock-solid under there great service. Highly Recommended.Read more
James Paterson
4 months ago
Prompt and efficient service. Highly recommend
Elliot Bell
4 months ago
We now use Summit across our real estate network. Great family business, reliable and their attention to detail is outstanding. Highly recommend.
Ryan Bell
4 months ago
As a reseller, we primarily work with Summit’s 4G services and have been very impressed. The plans are affordable, flexible, and well suited to our customers—especially for internet failover solutions. The sales and support teams are responsive and genuinely helpful, which is why we’re proud to partner with Summit Internet. We happily recommend them.Read more
Mal Skinner
4 months ago
After working with another ISP for several months to deliver a critical internet service for a major international sporting event, we were ultimately advised that the required upgrade was unlikely to be completed prior to event week. This left us facing a significant risk to service delivery. After exhausting all other options (and a few sleepless nights) we came across Summit Internet. From the initial conversation, Allan immediately understood the severity of the situation and quickly engaged his technical delivery team. Michael “Radar” was on site within days to assess and finalise a solution. Despite challenging conditions, including large trees and other obstructions, he worked tirelessly to design and implement an alternative approach. Leveraging an adjacent building, a temporary NBN connection, and a wireless link into the comms room, the solution was delivered within 24 hours of the initial site visit. Not only was the outcome faster than expected, but it was also more cost effective and delivered higher speeds than originally promised by the previous ISP. Over the course of the event, the service handled terabytes of data and supported hundreds of concurrent users without a single speed or performance issue. I cannot thank Summit Internet, particularly Allan and Radar enough for their exceptional service, technical expertise, and commitment to delivering under pressure. Highly recommended.Read more
Adam Hastie
4 months ago
Fausto and the staff at Summit are amazing. We have had nothing but fantastic service from start up to problem solving issues. The system is easy to use. Would highly recommend this service provider.
Jo Bodhankar
4 months ago
Summit internet recently set my small business up with a local land line number and a soft phone that runs off an app on my mobile - getting my personal phone number off the internet and being able to distinguish between business and personal calls is a game changer. Whole process took less than a week, and is super cost effective. Highly recommend.Read more
Alex Holly
6 months ago
Great service, efficient and smooth from start to finish!
Marija Cavlina
9 months ago
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Frequently asked questions
What is on-hold messaging?
What is the difference between text-to-speech and custom production?
Can I use my own music or a radio station?
How long should an on-hold message be?
Can I have different messages for different departments?
How quickly can I get this working?
Do I need a Summit phone system to use this?
Can I update the message myself later?
Stop Making Your Callers Listen to Nothing
If you are on Hosted PBX, text-to-speech can be live on your queues today. Produced audio can be underway this week.
Call 1300 049 749 or request a callback · Mon-Fri 9AM-5PM AEST