Glossary
IVR
The automated phone-menu system that greets callers, plays menu options, and routes calls based on caller selection or voice.
also known as: Interactive Voice Response, Auto-attendant, Phone menu
IVR (Interactive Voice Response) is the automated phone-menu system that answers inbound calls, plays a greeting and menu options, and routes the call based on the caller’s selection.
Typical IVR menu
“Thank you for calling Smith & Co. Press 1 for sales, 2 for support, 3 for accounts. Press 0 or stay on the line to speak with reception.”
What’s happening behind the scenes:
- Inbound call arrives.
- IVR plays the recorded greeting.
- IVR waits for DTMF (touch-tone) input.
- Based on input, IVR routes the call to the matched destination (extension, queue, voicemail, external number).
- If no input within a timeout, IVR routes to the default (usually reception).
Modern IVR features
- Multi-level menus - sub-menus for complex routing (“sales → SMB / enterprise / partner”).
- Time-of-day routing - different menu business hours vs after-hours.
- Holiday handling - automatic on Australian public holidays.
- VIP recognition - recognised caller-ID skips the menu and goes straight to account manager.
- Dial-by-name directory - callers spell the name of who they want.
- Multi-language menus - “press 9 for English, 8 for Mandarin”.
- Voice recognition - callers say what they want instead of pressing.
- CRM lookup before routing - IVR queries CRM to find the caller’s account, routes by account tier.
IVR vs AI Receptionist
Traditional IVR: pre-recorded menus, DTMF input, fixed routing logic.
AI Receptionist (3CX AI Edition): natural conversation, callers speak in plain English, AI interprets intent and routes intelligently. Better for open-ended enquiries; better for after-hours capture; better for international callers (50+ languages).
Most modern Australian deployments use both - auto-attendant in business hours (fast, predictable), AI Receptionist after-hours and overflow (captures everything).
Designing a good IVR
Some principles that age well:
- Three options max per menu level. More than three and callers forget by option 3.
- Reception fallback first. “Press 0 or stay on the line for reception” - never trap callers in a menu loop.
- State urgency early. “For roadside assistance, press 1 immediately.”
- Avoid sub-sub-menus. Two levels of menu is plenty for most businesses.
- Test the timeouts. 5-second waits are usually long enough.
See also
- [[hosted-pbx]] - IVR runs on the PBX
- [[acd]] - Automatic Call Distribution (queue routing after IVR)
- [[did-number]] - direct inbound numbers can bypass IVR
