A complete guide to Zendesk Talk hold music and greetings setup

The on-hold experience is one of those things that’s easy to forget about but makes a huge difference. It’s not just dead air between a customer calling and an agent picking up; it’s a direct reflection of your brand and how much you value a customer's time. Get it right, and it’s a smooth, professional touchpoint. Get it wrong, and you can add to a customer's frustration.

This guide will walk you through setting up and fine-tuning your greetings and hold music in Zendesk Talk. We will cover the basics and also dig into the best ways to configure everything to create a professional experience for your callers.

We’ll cover the core features, best practices for your setup, and some of the common challenges you might run into, backed by Zendesk's own documentation. Plus, we’ll explore how modern AI can provide alternatives to traditional on-hold experiences.

What are Zendesk Talk greetings and hold music?

Let's break down the basics. When you think about a call center experience, you’re usually interacting with two key audio components before you ever speak to a human.

Greetings are all the pre-recorded audio messages that guide a caller through your phone system. Think of them as the signposts on their journey. This includes things like:

• The initial "Welcome to our company!" message.
• IVR (Interactive Voice Response) menus that say "Press 1 for sales, Press 2 for support."
• Prompts that ask you to leave a voicemail.
• Messages letting you know that all agents are currently busy.

Hold music is exactly what it sounds like: the audio that plays while a customer is waiting in a queue for an agent or after an agent has put them on hold during a call.

Why is this important? It’s not just about filling silence. A well-thought-out setup helps manage customer expectations by letting them know they've reached the right place. Good hold music can reduce how long a wait feels, which can be the difference between a patient customer and an abandoned call. It also reinforces your brand identity. Your audio should reflect if your brand is upbeat and modern, or calm and professional.

Configuring greetings and hold music in Zendesk Talk

Let's review the practical steps for configuring these features inside Zendesk Talk. This part is all about the practical steps and choices you need to make.

Key greeting types in Zendesk Talk

Zendesk gives you a bunch of different greeting types you can set up for various points in the call flow. Getting these right is key to a smooth experience. Here are the must-haves, based on best practices from Zendesk:

• Wait Greeting: This is the first message someone hears when they enter the queue. It typically includes the hold music but should also have a voiceover acknowledging that they're in the queue and someone will be with them shortly.
• Hold Music: This is the audio that plays when an agent manually places a caller on hold during a conversation. It’s different from the wait greeting and is usually just music without any voice prompts.
• IVR Greetings: These are the prompts for your phone tree menu. They guide callers to the right department or team (e.g., "For billing questions, press 1").
• Voicemail Greeting: The message that plays right before a caller is prompted to leave a voicemail. This usually happens when they call outside of business hours or if no agents are available.
• Callback Confirmation: If you offer a callback option, this greeting confirms to the caller that their request was received and they'll get a call back soon, so they can hang up without losing their spot.

  

Customizing audio quality

You have two main ways to get your custom audio into Zendesk: you can record it directly in your browser or upload a pre-recorded file. Recording in the browser is quick for simple messages, but for a professional sound, uploading a file is recommended.

If you’re uploading, you need to pay attention to the technical specs. Zendesk supports MP3 and a few other formats, but they specifically note that formatting your files as "G711 µ-LAW" gives you the most consistent sound quality. You can read the details on their audio formatting page, but the key takeaway is that "G711 µ-LAW" avoids any extra compression that might degrade the audio.

A few best practices for creating your audio:

• Use a clear, professional voice. If you don't have someone in-house with a suitable voice, consider hiring a professional voice actor.
• Keep the tone consistent with your brand.
• Make your wait greeting files longer, for example, 5 minutes instead of 30 seconds. A short, repetitive loop can be frustrating for callers on hold.

Sourcing the right hold music

The music you choose says a lot about your brand. Think about your company's personality and pick something that matches.

Cisco call manager always has been and always will be a BOP

Reddit

More importantly, you have to make sure you have the legal right to use the music. You can't just use a popular song as your hold music; this could lead to copyright issues. Stick to royalty-free music libraries where you can purchase a license for business use.

Limitations of the standard Zendesk Talk setup

You can create a polished on-hold experience with Zendesk Talk. But it's also important to be realistic about the built-in limitations of a traditional phone queue system. Some features are not available, and others can be difficult to manage.

No real-time queue position information

One common point of frustration for anyone waiting on hold is not knowing where they are in line. Unfortunately, Zendesk Talk doesn't have a native feature to tell callers their specific position (e.g., "You are number 5 in the queue"). This has been a feature request from users, and as of now, there’s no planned implementation.

You can enable a setting that announces the "average wait time," but even Zendesk's documentation confirms this isn't personalized. It's just a general average, which can set inaccurate expectations. If the message says the average wait is five minutes but a caller ends up waiting for ten, they may become more frustrated than if no time estimate was provided.

Static and repetitive messaging

Your greetings are static audio files. This can be a challenge when you need to be agile. For instance, if you have a temporary service outage and want to inform callers right away, a manager has to manually record a new message, ensure it's in the right format, and then upload it to replace the existing greeting. When the outage is over, they have to do it all over again to switch it back. This can be a manual and time-consuming process for real-time communication.

The IVR system also repeats the main greeting three times if a caller doesn't press a number. You can't change this behavior. For callers who are listening and just waiting to be routed to the default queue, it can feel repetitive.

Deflecting calls to reduce wait times

Optimizing the on-hold experience is a great goal, but an even better customer experience is one where the customer doesn't need to call and wait. An IVR can route calls, but it can't solve problems. It directs calls but doesn't resolve the underlying issues.

Clicks customer support replies are really just AI bot replies powered by Zendesk. This is like the worst type of hold music ever.

Reddit

This is where you can start thinking beyond the phone queue entirely. Instead of forcing customers into a waiting line, an AI-powered solution like the eesel AI Chatbot can sit on your website and provide instant, accurate answers from your knowledge base 24/7. It can even connect to your other systems to perform actions like looking up an order status or checking on a refund. The goal is to resolve the issue before a phone call is even necessary.

Understanding Zendesk Talk pricing

It's important to know that Zendesk Talk isn't a standalone product. It's part of the broader Zendesk Suite plans. To get access to voice features, you need to be on at least the Suite Team plan, which starts at $55 per agent per month when billed annually.

If you want more advanced features like IVR phone trees, you'll need to upgrade to the Suite Professional plan or higher, which starts at $115 per agent per month. As always, pricing can change, so it's best to check the official Zendesk pricing page for the latest info.

Next steps

Getting your Zendesk Talk hold music and greetings set up correctly can significantly improve your customer experience. It shows a level of professionalism and respect for your customers' time. But as we've seen, the platform has some limitations, like the lack of queue position data and a manual system for updating messages.

While good hold music is a thoughtful touch, the goal can also be to eliminate wait times entirely. The best phone queue, after all, is no phone queue.

Instead of just optimizing the wait, it’s time to think about automating the resolution. An AI agent from eesel AI can integrate directly into your Zendesk account to autonomously resolve your frontline tickets. It learns from your past conversations and help center to provide instant, accurate support, freeing up your human agents to focus on the complex issues that truly require their expertise. It’s the next step toward creating a more efficient, wait-free experience for your customers.