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Okay, it's 2009.  Message-On-Hold has been around for a quarter of a century.  Your competitors have been using it for years and you've been using it for a few less or a few more years than them depending on whether you're more of a leader (willing to take a chance and risk failure) or a follower (like to let others take the fall first and bet on sure things).  Either way you now know that it works, it helps your business grow, it really does promote your products, it really does cross sell your products and/or services, and it really does provide information to your callers/customers that can alternately save your staff time or generate interest in your business and more and more.

But it's 2009 and you're about to renew your Annual Contract or your Multi-Year Contract or just buy a new program, or maybe maybe implement Message On Hold for the very first time... but as you make that decision, you take a look in your Message On Hold garage (ie. your phone room or some obscure storage closet) and think it may be time to replace your old MOH jalopy.  So what's available and what's right for you?

Well you have choices.  

First of all, if you have a cassette load digital announcer, it's time to put it out to pasture.  Cassette tapes days are numbered and you don't want to be ready to launch a new promotion via your on hold communication and find out your existing format is no longer available (come on now, if you have a cassette loader, you've probably had it for over 10 years.  What else in your life is more than 10 years old?  Let's move on)

Now, assuming your phone system is not a VOiP solution, which may mean you don't need external equipment, you basically have a number of options, but for the purposes of keeping your sanity and mine, and avoid being to obscure, let's say you have three options:

CD Load Digital Announcer - Similar to the cassette loader, it takes a CD (instead of a cassette) and lets you place it in the built in CDplayer for automatic download to solid state digital chips.  Good basic choice, except shipping charges of fixed media are involved which you're inevitably going to pay for and you're going to have to wait 3 days to 2 weeks to receive your newly produced program and you're going to have to go down to the MOH garage to load the player.  

MP3/Flash Drive - If you're hands on and the Remote Load System (see below) isn't necessary, this is probably the way to go.  Save shipping charges and get immediate gratification by having the newly produced Message On Hold program emailed to you.  Copy it from your hard drive to a flash drive, insert in the unit, and your new program is communicating with callers in minutes.

Remote Load System - We have these systems all over but these days, we generally consider it part of our Enterprise Solution.  If you have multiple locations, especially many locations, this is the way to go.  Once the unit is installed properly, we handle the downloads which take place (from your point of view) automatically, either by analog or digital download depending on the system.  No need to depend on location personnel and we can tell you from our experience, when it comes to MOH, you shouldn't depend on location personnel.  They're up to their ears in other more visible tasks (your personnel are not on hold very often so it's not on their radar, or a priority for them) and will get around to updating the program when they're in the mood.

So that's the overview.  If you're still confused which way to go, speak to your Message On Hold professional. Don't try to make this decision at home. :)