Interactive Voice Responses (IVRs)

An Interactive Voice Response, commonly known as an IVR or sometimes a Contact Map, is a type of service used to automatically redirect incoming callers to a specific menu, message, or series of operators based on certain criteria, such as:

  • Choices made by the caller while on the call.
  • The time of day that the call was made.
  • Whether anyone is available to answer the call.

Custom, or Bespoke IVRs, can be tailored to a customer's exact needs, and due to the depth of functionality available there is a substantial number of settings you can learn here.

The fundamentals of creating an IVR service are covered in Creating a Blank IVR, although if you also want to set up a new customer to own this service, you should read Creating a Customer instead.

Once you've created the basic IVR service, you can find it in the Services tab of the Customer Details page. To configure the IVR, click its Configure link.

The rest of this section will introduce some of the most common configurations for bespoke IVRs, and guide you through the process of setting up what you need.

Further Reading