Call settings

What a caller hears while an agent has them on hold, how the agent is reminded, and how long a department leaves an agent alone after a call they did not take — set once per calling account.

TL;DR

What it is — the per-account settings behind the Hold button on the call card (hold music, reminder interval) and the agent cooldowns that stop a department from ringing the same agent again straight after they declined, were busy or did not answer.

Who it's for — admins of a Lodgestory Voice account. Agents simply press Hold, Resume, Answer and Decline.

Top outcome — every held caller hears your music instead of silence, no agent forgets a caller on hold, and a call an agent declines moves on to their colleagues instead of ringing them again.

At a glance


Plan tier	Included with every Lodgestory Voice plan.
Who can manage	Account Owners and Admins.
Applies to	Every hold on this account — browser calls and calls answered on an agent's phone — and the music a caller hears during a transfer. Cooldowns apply to every department of the account.
Defaults	Default hold tone; a reminder every 60 seconds. Cooldowns: 15 seconds after a decline, 15 after busy, 10 after no answer.
Top limits	Reminder interval 0–600 seconds (0 = off). One hold music file per account. Each cooldown 0–300 seconds (0 = off).
API	Hold time rides on the `call.completed` webhook (`hold_seconds`, `hold_count`, `holds`); what each agent did with a call rides on `call.completed` and `call.missed` (`agent_offers`).

How to find it

Sidebar: Settings → Calling → [your account] → Call settings.

Direct URL: https://lodgestory.com/crm/settings/calling/{accountId}/call-settings

📸 [SCREENSHOT: call-settings-landing.png — the Call settings page with the Hold music picker and the reminder field]

What are Call settings?

The problem it solves

An agent who needs a minute — to look something up, to ask a colleague — used to have two choices: mute, which leaves the caller in silence wondering whether the line dropped, or hang up and call back. Neither reads as professional, and neither is visible to a supervisor.

Hold parks the caller on music so they know they are still connected, and the call card keeps a clock on it. Call settings decide what that music is and how insistently the agent is reminded.

What you get

Hold music of your own. Pick any file from the account's Media library (upload it under Music on Hold). Leave it on None for the default tone.
One choice, used everywhere. The same music plays to a caller held from the call card and to a caller waiting while an agent transfers them. Callers waiting in a department queue hear that department's own hold music when it has one; departments without their own inherit this account music too.
A reminder the agent cannot miss. Every n seconds the agent hears a soft double chime, and the call card turns amber, then red once the caller has waited twice as long. Set the interval to fit your service standard, or set it to 0 to switch the reminder off.
Nothing happens behind the agent's back. A held caller is never resumed automatically. The reminder nags; the agent decides.
Agent cooldowns. After an agent declines a department call, is busy, or lets it ring out, the department leaves that agent alone for a few seconds before it rings them again. The call keeps ringing their colleagues meanwhile. Without a cooldown the same call comes straight back to the agent who just turned it down.
Decline means decline. When an agent presses Decline, their other devices stop ringing for that call too — the follow-me phone does not keep ringing a call they already said no to.

Customer scenarios

Front desk checks a booking. The guest asks about a late check-out; the agent presses Hold, opens the booking, and resumes twenty seconds later. The guest heard your music, not silence.
A supervisor sets a 30-second standard. With the reminder at 30 seconds the card turns amber after half a minute and red after one — and the Team view shows on hold · 00:45 on that member's call, so long holds are visible across the floor.
Quality review. The call-log report's Hold Time (s) and Hold Count columns show which calls spent the most time on hold.
An agent is mid-conversation at their desk. A department call rings; they press Decline. With a 15-second decline cooldown the call carries on ringing the other three agents, one of them answers, and the call log reads Declined by Asha · answered by Bala.
A one-person department. The only agent declines. The caller hears the hold music; after the cooldown the call rings the agent again, until they answer or the department's maximum wait sends the caller to its failover.

Core concepts

Term	What it means
Hold	The caller is parked on hold music and cannot hear the agent; the agent's side is quiet. Resume reconnects the two.
Hold music	The file played to a held caller. Chosen per account here; departments choose their own queue music separately.
Hold reminder	The interval, in seconds, between chimes while a caller is held. The card turns amber at one interval and red at two.
Hold time	The seconds a caller spent on hold during a call, kept on the call record and in reports. Talk time still counts the whole conversation.
Agent cooldown	How long a department leaves an agent alone after a call they did not take. Three of them: after a decline, after busy, after no answer. Whole seconds; 0 switches one off.
Decline	The agent turned the call down on purpose — the Decline button on the call card, the mobile app or a desk phone. Different from not answering, and recorded as such.

Quick Start — set hold music in 2 minutes

Step 1 — Upload the file

Settings → Calling → [your account] → Media → Upload. Choose Music on Hold as the type. A short loop of 30–60 seconds is plenty; it repeats for as long as the caller waits.

Step 2 — Open Call settings

Settings → Calling → [your account] → Call settings.

Step 3 — Pick the music

Choose the file under Hold music. Press the play button next to it to preview.

Step 4 — Set the reminder

Enter the interval in seconds under Hold reminder — 60 by default; 0 switches it off.

Step 5 — Save

Press Save. The next hold on any call on this account uses the new settings.

📸 [SCREENSHOT: call-settings-saved.png — Hold music selected, reminder set to 45, Save enabled]

Step 6 — Set the agent cooldowns (optional)

On the same page, under Agent cooldowns, enter the seconds for After the agent declines, After the agent is busy and After the agent does not answer. The defaults — 15, 15 and 10 — suit most teams. Press Save; the next call a department offers uses them.

📸 [SCREENSHOT: call-settings-cooldowns.png — the Agent cooldowns section with three fields showing 15, 15 and 10 seconds]

How it works

When an agent presses Hold, Lodgestory parks the caller on the account's hold music and mutes the conversation both ways. The agent's call card switches to Caller on hold · 00:12 with the clock running. At each reminder interval the agent hears a chime; the card goes amber at one interval and red at two. Resume reconnects the caller and the conversation carries on. If either party hangs up during a hold, the call ends normally. Every hold is recorded on the call with when it started, when it ended and how long it lasted.

When a department offers a call to an agent and the agent does not take it, Lodgestory notes why — they declined, they were busy, or the call rang out — and starts the matching cooldown for that agent. Until it ends, no department of the account rings them. The caller never notices: the call goes on ringing the other available agents, or plays the queue's hold music when nobody else is free. An agent who declines stays Online; a cooldown is a pause of a few seconds, not a break.

Features in depth

Hold music

A single file per account from the Media library. Any length works; short loops are recommended. Deleting the file from Media reverts the account to the default tone.

Hold reminder

Integer seconds, 0–600. The chime is a soft double note played in the agent's browser (or the CRM tab where they answered the call). The amber and red card colours follow the same interval whether or not the chime is on.

Agent cooldowns

Three whole-second values, each 0–300, set for the whole account:

Cooldown	Starts when	Default
After the agent declines	The agent pressed Decline on a department call.	15 seconds
After the agent is busy	The agent's phone or softphone answered busy.	15 seconds
After the agent does not answer	The call rang the agent for the department's ring time and was not picked up.	10 seconds

One setting for every department. A cooldown belongs to the agent, not to a queue, so an agent in two departments is left alone by both.
0 switches a cooldown off. The department may then ring the agent again at once.
A caller who hangs up starts no cooldown. Neither does a call a colleague answered first.
Declining stops the agent's other devices. With the decline cooldown at 5 seconds or more, pressing Decline also stops the follow-me phone ringing for that call. Below 5 seconds it keeps ringing, because the department would ring the agent again almost immediately anyway.
A direct call can be declined too. When a call rings one agent directly — their own number, a repeat caller sent to the agent they last spoke to — and they decline it, departments leave them alone for the decline cooldown as well.
Changes apply from the next call offered. Calls already ringing are not affected.

Where declines show up

The calls list: Declined by Asha under the caller, on answered calls too; Declined by Asha · Tried Bala on a missed one.
The call detail sheet: Agents rung lists every agent the call reached with what they did — Answered, Declined, No answer, Busy, Unreachable, Answered elsewhere — how many times it rang them, and on which device. An agent the call was meant for but could not ring is listed too, and stays on the sheet when someone else then answered through that agent's If nobody answers fallback: Unreachable when their app was not running, Offline when they were Offline or on a break. This applies to the agent a call named directly (their own number, a voice-menu key, an IVR Studio step), not to members a department queue skipped.
A call an agent declined that nobody else answered is a missed call, and reads Agent declined.
Insights → Agents: a Declined column per agent, with the calls behind it one click away.
Calls → Team: declined calls per member for the day, and a Declined by an agent tile on the day metrics.
The Call Log report: Declined By and Agent Offers columns.
The call.completed and call.missed webhooks: an agent_offers list.
Automations: call.declinedAgentsCount on call.completed and call.missed rules — for example, to alert a supervisor when a call was declined and then missed.

Where hold time shows up

The call detail sheet: On hold 01:20 next to talk time, with · 3× when the caller was held more than once.
The calls list: On hold 01:20 under the duration.
The Team view: on hold · 00:45 on the member's live call, updating every second.
The Call Log report: Hold Time (s) and Hold Count columns.
The call.completed webhook: hold_seconds, hold_count, and a holds list with each hold's start, end and duration.
Automations: call.holdSec and call.holdCount are available on call.completed rules — for example, to open a ticket when a caller was held for more than two minutes.

Roles & permissions

Role	Can do
Account Owner / Admin	Change hold music, the reminder interval and the agent cooldowns.
User (agent)	Hold and resume their own calls. Only the agent on the call can hold or resume it. Answer or decline the calls that ring them.

Connections

Calls — the call card where Hold and Resume live.
Departments — queue hold music and announcements for callers waiting for an agent.
Call Recording & Voicemail — hold time is inside the recording; the recording keeps running.
Reports — the Call Log export with the hold columns.

Limits a user will run into

A caller cannot be transferred while on hold; resume first. A caller cannot be held while a transfer is in flight.
Hold is available on Lodgestory Voice accounts only. On other providers the Hold button is disabled.
Hold time is counted inside talk time, not subtracted from it.
Cooldowns are per account, not per department, and cover every department call — not only the caller the agent turned down.
A decline on the follow-me phone is reported by the phone network; Lodgestory records what the network says, which for some carriers reads as Busy or No answer. It does not stop the softphone ringing.
Declines are recorded from the day the feature is switched on for your account. Earlier calls show who they rang, not what each agent did.

Errors & FAQ

The Hold button is greyed out. The call is not connected yet, a transfer is in progress, or the call is not on a Lodgestory Voice account. Hover the button for the reason.
"Hold is not available on this voice account yet." The account's voice service has not been upgraded. Contact support; the settings you save here apply once it is.
The caller hears the default tone, not my file. Check the file is still in Media and saved on this page; a deleted file falls back to the default.
No chime. The reminder interval is 0, or the browser tab has had no interaction yet and cannot play sound. The card still turns amber and red.
I don't see Agent cooldowns on the page. The account's voice service has not been upgraded yet. Contact support.
"Cooldowns are switched off on this account's voice service." Your values are saved and start applying once support switches them on for the account.
An agent declined, and the call rang them again. The decline cooldown is 0, or the cooldown ended while the caller was still waiting — with nobody else free, the department comes back to the same agent. Raise the cooldown, or add agents to the department.
A declined call shows as No answer. The agent declined on an older version of the mobile app, or on their follow-me phone. Update the app; declines made in the browser are always recorded as declines.
Does a cooldown put the agent on a break? No. The agent stays Online, their status does not change, and chat routing is untouched.

Changelog

Sep 2026 — Agent cooldowns after a declined, busy or unanswered department call; Decline stops the agent's other devices; what each agent did with a call is kept on the call record, in Insights, in reports and on the call.completed / call.missed webhooks.
Sep 2026 — Hold / Resume on the call card; per-account hold music and hold reminder; hold time on the call record, in reports and on the call.completed webhook.