VERM IVR traversal paths explained

A traversal path in the VERM IVR Stats report is the exact chain of menus and keypresses a call followed before it landed somewhere. If a caller hits your main menu, presses 2 for support, then presses 1 for billing, that whole route is one traversal path. The IVR Traversal sub-report groups every call by the path it took, so you see at a glance which routes are popular and which ones bleed callers.

What one path row tells you

Each path row shows the number of calls that followed it plus a breakdown of the keypress options those calls ended on. Alongside the call count, the row splits into goals — calls that reached a Call queue — and hangups or unanswered calls, each with a percentage. Every keypress option under the path carries its own goals and hangups count too, so you can pinpoint the exact choice where callers drop off.

The mental model is simple: a path is a sequence, the options are the branches off that sequence. A short path that ends with a high goal percentage is a clean menu. A long path with a fat hangup count is a menu that asks too much before it routes the IVR (interactive voice response) caller anywhere useful.

There is a timing version of the same data. The IVR Timing sub-report lists those same paths but adds the average time a call spent on each one, the total time across all calls, and the shortest and longest call counted. Every keypress option carries its own timing too. Read it next to the call counts when a popular path also shows a long average — that combination is where callers wait the most before they reach a person, and it is usually the first thing worth trimming.

Using paths to fix a menu

Sort paths by call volume first. Your top three or four paths carry most of your inbound traffic, so a small improvement there beats fixing a path two callers a week use. Then look at the hangup percentage per path:

• High hangups on the first keypress usually means the opening prompt is unclear or too long.
• High hangups deep in a path point at menu fatigue — too many layers before the call reaches a person.
• A keypress option with almost no calls is a candidate to remove or reword.

Remember that a goal here only means the call reached a queue, not that an agent picked up. A path can have a 95 percent goal rate and still produce abandoned calls downstream if your queue is understaffed. Read the goal number as "the menu did its job," then check staffing separately. The keypress and Call menu detail under each path is where most prompt cleanup decisions come from.

How a single call becomes a path

flowchart LR
  A[Main menu] --> B{Press 1 or 2}
  B -->|press 1| C[Sales submenu]
  B -->|press 2| D[Support submenu]
  C --> E[Path Main then Sales]
  D --> F[Path Main then Support]
  E --> G[Grouped in traversal report]
  F --> G
  G --> H[Counts goals and hangups]

For granular work, jump from a path to the IVR Details sub-report, which lists the individual calls on that path along with the DID (direct inward dialing) each caller dialed. That is the fastest way to confirm a suspicious path is real and not a routing mistake. Pair traversal data with the VICIdial reports overview to see the whole journey, and with the real-time main report to watch queues fill while you tune prompts.

VICIfast runs managed VICIdial on a dedicated server with VERM ready out of the box and a branded subdomain over HTTPS in under 40 seconds — so you can read traversal paths the same day you launch. See pricing to get started.