Digital Signage Platform Adds Phone On-hold Messaging. No, Really.

June 27, 2012 by Dave Haynes

Differentiation is important in a crowded marketplace, as you don’t want to go in selling something that dozens of other companies also have.

On that count, Louisville, KY-based Captive Indoor Media is definitely differentiated from the digital signage software mob – as it has added on-hold telephone messaging to its digital signage software offer.

Connect the dots on that one if you can. The company says the two seemingly disparate technologies and applications are complementary for its customer base.

“Over the course of the last year Captive has spent a lot of time researching which product categories are of the most value to customers and how to integrate them to reduce the time and complexity required in managing these services” said Brian Nutt, Captive Indoor Media’s Founder and CEO. “The first product added is on-hold messaging, which is widely deployed within our current customer base right now. Codigo Voice will be an attractive alternative.” 

The company says its software manages “thousands of digital signage units” and adding voice means the platform shifts from one that “that only manages digital signage networks to one that offers management of multiple systems from a single login.”

“We asked our customers,” said Nutt, “what systems they were using and how we could make it easier to manage them. Most replied that they wanted an easier way to manage their on-hold marketing messages. So, we just added that functionality to a tool they were already using.”

Codigo Voice offers subscribers more than 7,000 songs in every genre to play while callers are on hold or to serve as background music for their own marketing messages. Uploading audio clips is easy, but users can also choose to work with Captive’s award-winning creative team, utilizing professional male and female voice talent to develop high-impact audio commercials. The online systems allows users to schedule their messages remotely, managing their on-hold messaging from anywhere with an internet connection.

I know diddly about the on-hold messaging business, other than being an end-user stuck listening to awful tunes, so I can’t say whether this is clever or kooky. What’s pretty evident in the marketplace, however, is businesses are looking to streamline vendors and cut costs – so if they can get two things from one platform and one contact, that tends to make them happy. A hat tip to these guys for taking a different path.