IVR (Interactive Voice Response)
The automated menu that greets inbound callers and routes them without an agent.
IVR stands for Interactive Voice Response: the automated menu that answers an inbound call, plays a prompt, collects a keypress or a spoken response, and routes accordingly. "Press 1 for sales, 2 for support" is the canonical example.
What it is called in VICIdial
VICIdial's built-in IVR is the call menu. You define a menu in the administration interface, attach a prompt, and map each DTMF digit to a destination: an in-group, an extension, another call menu, a voicemail box, or a hangup. Menus nest, so a top-level department choice can hand off to a second menu for sub-options.
Because VICIdial sits on Asterisk, anything the call menu cannot express can be written directly in the dial plan, and AGI scripts let a menu branch on data - looking up an account number the caller entered, checking business hours, or pulling a balance - rather than on the keypress alone.
A DID points at the menu, the menu points at a queue. That indirection is the whole reason to have one.
Where it earns its keep
- High inbound volume where most calls sort cleanly into a few buckets
- Multiple teams behind one published number
- Out-of-hours handling, paired with the in-group's
after_hours_action - Self-service lookups that would otherwise occupy an agent for two minutes
Where it costs you
Every menu layer loses callers. People hang up, mis-press, or sit through options that do not match their problem and pick whatever came last. A menu that saves agent time on routine calls can quietly raise abandonment on the calls you most wanted to answer.
Two rules keep that in check. Keep it shallow - one layer if you can, two at most, because callers stop tracking options past about four choices. And always leave a route to a human: an unmatched or repeated timeout should fall through to a queue rather than to a hangup.
If you only have one team answering the phone, do not build an IVR at all. Route the DID straight into the in-group.