IVR (interactive voice response)
IVR (interactive voice response) is an automated phone menu that greets callers, offers options by key press or voice and routes them to the right queue or answer.
What it is
“Press 1 for orders, press 2 for payments.” That is IVR. It sits between the caller and the agents and does two jobs: it sends each call to the right group of people and it answers simple questions without a human, for example an order status or working hours.
How it looks in practice
A typical menu has a greeting, a few options at the first level and sometimes a second level. Some menus recognise speech instead of key presses. The useful measures are containment (the share of calls fully solved in the menu), the share of callers who drop out inside the menu, the time spent before reaching a person and how often callers choose the wrong option.
An illustrative example: 30% of callers press 0 right away to reach an agent. That usually means the options do not match why people actually call.
Why it matters
A good menu saves agent time and gets the client to the right person faster. A bad one is the first thing a client hates about the company: long greetings, too many options, loops that return to the start, no way to reach a human. The menu is part of the client experience, not just a technical layer.
The typical mistake
Designing the menu around the company’s structure instead of the client’s reasons for calling. Another mistake is hiding the human option to save money, which raises effort and anger and often costs more in repeat calls. Keep the first level short, put the most common reasons first, always offer a way to an agent, and listen to recordings of calls that dropped inside the menu.
More in Signals
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- CRM for a travel agency: who owns the client when everyone writes on WhatsApp and InstagramIn a travel agency the client takes weeks to choose, writes at night and on weekends, receives dozens of options and promises to send the deposit tomorrow. When each agent runs chats on their own phone, the owner can't see who handles a client or who was lost, and when an agent leaves, last year's travellers leave too. The fix starts with rules: numbers owned by the agency, one owner per client, deposit and document deadlines tracked, and the client on a trip handled first.