IVR phone menu: “press 1” and choosing a department by voice

Without an IVR phone menu, a client who calls a car service to book a repair reaches the parts seller. The seller transfers the call, the line drops, and the client goes to another service. Every such transfer is a lost booking and wasted staff time.

IVR is a voice menu, or a “press 1” auto attendant: the client chooses what they need and goes straight to the right person. That's how the menu removes extra transfers. Your account has two kinds of menu. With buttons: “Press 1 to book, 2 for a question to the doctor.” And with words: the client says “booking” or “parts”, and the robot understands the answer. The menu is part of the built-in cloud phone system for business: it's built in the same scheme as the numbers, the CRM and the voice bot, and the CRM lead is created by itself.

Watch the minute-and-a-half video, and below you'll find the step-by-step setup.

Why businesses need it

• Clinic and dental office: button 1 leads to the administrators for booking, button 2 — to the team of doctors. Every question goes straight to whoever answers it.
• Car service, repairs, lawyers: a menu with the words “booking”, “parts”, “bodywork” leads to different specialists. The client doesn't have to remember digits.
• A company with sales and service: “Press 1 for sales, 2 for service.” Fewer transfers between departments and fewer dropped calls.
• An administrator as a safety net: for those who chose nothing, the menu repeats, and then the call goes to a live person. Nobody is left without an answer.

How the voice menu works

A voice menu is a block of the incoming scheme. The client hears a message and makes a choice, and the call goes to the branch of that choice. Each branch gets its own blocks — usually “Employees” with the right team (how to set them up is covered in the article on automatic call distribution). The menu type is chosen when you create the block and can't be changed later: “Digits: the client presses buttons” or “Words: the client answers with a voice”.

There's no “+” button under the menu block. The next blocks are added with the “+” button on the branch cards.

How to set up a keypad IVR: “press 1”

1. 1
   Add the block

   Click “+” in the branch you need and choose “IVR menu: digits”.
2. 2
   Set the message

   In “Message before the menu”, choose “Play a robot text” (up to 300 characters) or “Play an mp3/wav message”. If you like, turn on “Repeat the message if the client has not chosen”.
3. 3
   Add buttons

   A new block already has buttons 1 and 2. For the third and further ones, click “+ button branch”. Digits from 1 to 9, # and * are available.
4. 4
   Fill the branches

   Click “+” in the “After pressing button 1” branch and choose “Call employees / create a lead” with the right people. Do the same for the other buttons.
5. 5
   Set up the backup branch

   “Chose nothing or hung up”. Without it, some clients will be left without an answer.
6. 6
   Save

   The “Save” button at the bottom of the screen.

Voice menu with words: speech recognition IVR

The “IVR menu: words” block only listens to the client's answer. The question is asked by the “Message” block placed before it.

1. Click “+” and choose “Play / send a message”. Type the question, for example: “Tell us what you're interested in: booking, parts or body repair.”
2. Click “+” after it and choose “IVR menu: words”. The new block has the “Yes”, “No”, “Any words” (the client said something else) and “No words” (the client stayed silent) branches.
3. Type into the branch's “Keywords”: a word and Enter. Write in Cyrillic, and numbers in words.
4. Click “+ answer branch” to add a new option.
5. Fill in “Any words” and “No words” and save the scheme.

If calls go to the wrong branch, open the “Speech recognition log”. It shows exactly what the robot recognized. Add those words to the right branch.

How to repeat the menu if the client chose nothing

The client may have been distracted and missed the menu. To give them a second chance, you need the “Continue from a given block” block — it's also described in the article on time-based call routing:

1. Click “+” in the “Chose nothing or hung up” branch and choose “Continue from a given block”.
2. Choose the menu block in the “The block to continue from” field. For a speech menu, choose the “Message” block with the question before it: the “IVR menu: words” block only listens, so the client would hear silence.
3. Turn on “Limit the repeats within one request” and set 2 in the “Allowed number of repeats” field.
4. Choose the “Employees” block with the administrator in the “Where to continue when the limit is reached” field.

The client will hear the menu again, and if they still choose nothing, they'll reach a live person.

Read also: Automatic call distribution between managers: queue and bot, Time-based call routing: forward calls by schedule, lead step and CRM