IVR

IVR stands for Interactive Voice Response: the automated phone menu that answers a business line and asks the caller to press or say a number. “Press 1 for service, press 2 for billing” is an IVR. It routes calls, by keypad or by a few recognized words, but it does not hold a conversation and it does not take the job.

How an IVR works

An IVR is a tree of prompts. Each prompt is a recording or synthesized speech. Each answer is a key the caller presses, which the phone sends as a keypad tone (DTMF), or a short phrase the system is listening for. Every answer moves the caller one branch further: to the next prompt, a queue, an extension, a recorded answer or a voicemail box.

One standard for writing these dialogs is VoiceXML, a W3C Recommendation published in 2004. It was designed for audio dialogs that use synthesized speech, recorded audio, recognition of spoken and DTMF key input, recording of spoken input, telephony and mixed-initiative conversations, and its stated goal is to bring web-style development to interactive voice response applications.

What an IVR is used for

• Routing. Sending a call to the right department, queue or person.
• Self-service. Answers that need no person: hours, an account balance, an order status, a payment by keypad.
• Collecting details before a person picks up. An account number or the reason for the call, so the call reaches the right queue.
• Outbound calls. Surveys, reminders and robocalls. The “press 1” in a robocall is an IVR on the calling side, and the FCC’s rules require a prerecorded telemarketing call to offer an automated opt-out by voice or keypress within two seconds of saying who is calling.

IVR, auto attendant, AI receptionist

• Auto attendant. The simplest IVR: a greeting and a menu that transfers the call, by option or by extension number.
• IVR. A menu that can also look things up and take keypad entries, still limited to the answers each prompt expects.
• AI receptionist. A voice agent that takes the caller’s own words instead of a menu choice, asks follow-up questions, and can finish a task on the call, such as booking a job.

Why it matters for a service company

Every owner has been on the caller’s side of one: the insurance carrier’s menu, the phone company’s, the seven options that all lead to hold music. Now put a homeowner with water on the kitchen floor in that position. They call the first plumber Google shows, hear a menu, and press 1. The menu forwards to the office line, which is closed, and they are listening to voicemail. They hang up and call the next name.

A phone tree solves a problem most trade shops do not have. It exists to split calls among departments, and a three-truck plumbing company has one department. What the shop needs is the thing a menu cannot do: ask what is wrong, decide whether it is an emergency, get an address, and put a job on the board. A menu adds a step between the caller and the hang-up, and the step is the cost.

If you keep a menu

• Keep it to two or three options, and put the emergency option first.
• Say the options in the caller’s words (“water leaking now”), not your departments’ names.
• Never end an option in a voicemail box that nobody checks after hours.
• Let a caller reach a person, or a callback, without listening to the whole menu.

On DispatchLine there is no menu: callers talk to the AI receptionist the way they would to a front desk, and it can book the job on the call; see how the agent handles a call.

Related terms

• Intent, what the agent works out from the caller’s own words instead of a keypress.
• Warm transfer, how a call reaches a person when it needs one.
• Conditional forwarding, the usual way a line is routed to the agent after hours.
• Triage questions, emergency keywords and business facts, what replaces the menu’s options.
• Robocall, the outbound calls that use “press 1” menus.
• See call answering, call forwarding and arrival window.

Sources: the W3C’s VoiceXML 2.0 Recommendation and the FCC’s rule on prerecorded calls, 47 CFR 64.1200(b).