customer prompt or other message not in the on hold playback to be sent to the customer the workflow will also prompt the vms 180 to send an instruction signal to the gateway 150 to stop the on hold playback so that the customer prompt e g u201c press 1 to continue holding press 2 to leave a message for us to call you back u201d or message can be sent to the customer after such a customer prompt or message is completed the workflow will prompt the vms 180 to send an instruction signal through the local transmission line 145 to the gateway 150 instructing the gateway 150 to start the on hold playback for that customer call once again it should be noted that the preferred embodiment of the present invention utilizes explicit instruction signals to start or stop the on hold playback however it has been contemplated that standard voip signaling commands from the vms 180 such as but not limited to u201c no longer listening u201d or u201c resuming listening u201d may be implicitly utilized to start or stop the on hold playback still referring to fig1 the on hold playback is selected from a number of on hold playback tracks also the other messages that may be interspersed during the customer call 39 s on hold time are each part of an announcement stack an announcement stack includes a number of related announcements targeted toward a particular customer type when the workflow prompts the vms 180 to send the gateway 150 an instruction to start the on hold playback the instruction signal will also include instructions from the gateway regarding which on hold playback track to play which announcement stack to select and frequency of the announcements each announcement in the.