In telephony

Telephony

In telecommunications, telephony encompasses the general use of equipment to provide communication over distances, specifically by connecting telephones to each other....

, a zip tone is a tone an automatic call distribution system makes to alert an agent in a call center environment that he or she is about to be connected to a customer. CIC by Interactive Intelligence calls it a whisper tone. The whisper tone can be customized to hint the agent about the nature of the call, so the agent can answer the call with the appropriate greeting.