How to Add Custom Hold Music & Messages to Ring Central

While the telephone has always played an integral role in conducting business, with today’s COVID-19 health crisis, the telephone may literally be the “lifeline to your customers”. More and more consumers have stopped frequenting businesses and instead are calling them, driving a massive increase of inbound calls.  As a result, this has caused an already major shift in businesses going from traditional phones, to a more feature rich (and less expensive) voip and/or cloud based solutions such as RingCentral (and others!) that allow them to operate more efficiently and at a reduced cost.

Now one would think that with all the latest fancy features for unified communications such as find me follow me options, automated attendants, phone to email, etc that a major emphasis would also include the “caller on hold experience”.  But wait… NOT so fast! Ring Central (as is the with most voip providers) comes equipped with default on hold music. Sounds great right? The problem is, the default hold music isn’t great sounding! In fact, in fact, most people say it sounds like tinny elevator music, or cheesy porn music from the 80’s!!!

However, even with the lack of emphasis on the caller on hold experience  – there is a silver lining! RingCentral allows users the ability to upload custom on hold audio files for a branded on hold experience for your callers. By using a custom hold message you greatly improve your business image and make better use of all the powerful features that this system provides.

Below, we cover how to upload a custom on hold recording, and what file format is required.

File formats to use with RingCentral.

Most voip/cloud based phone systems cannot accept a native .mp3 file for uploading. Instead,  you will have to use  one of these two resolutions with these exact attributes for optimal sound quality and playback on RingCentral.

CCITT u-Law (G711a), 8kHz, 8 bit, mono.

Or PCM, 8kHz, 16 bit, mono.

How to Upload Your On Hold File to Ring Central and What Format is Required?

1. In your RingCentral account, click the My Settings tab.

2. Click Music-On-Hold in the Call Settings menu on the left-hand side.

3. Click the New button corresponding to the music you want to update.

4. Enter a name for your music in the Name field.

5. If you’re using Internet Explorer, click Import. Browse your computer for the file you wish to import, and click Open to upload it.

6. Click Submit to save your changes.

You’re done! Your new music-on-hold is all set.

Now that we’ve covered the “how?” …. Below, we now cover the “why!” you need a custom branded caller on hold experience vs the default music on hold.