IVR (interactive voice response)
An IVR is an automated phone menu that routes callers based on keypresses or short spoken commands.
"Press one for sales, press two for support." The system is a tree the business drew in advance, and the caller’s job is to work out which branch their problem belongs to — which requires them to understand how the company is organised internally.
IVRs are reliable and cheap, which is why they persist despite being widely disliked. The failure mode is not the technology but the premise: a caller with a problem that does not fit any of the options either presses zero or hangs up, and the menu has no way to notice either.
Related
- DTMF (touch tones) — DTMF is the system of dual tones a phone sends when you press a key, used to pass digits through a call.
- Warm transfer — A warm transfer is handing a call to a person while passing on the context, rather than dropping the caller into a fresh conversation.
- DID (direct inward dialling) — A DID is a phone number that routes an outside caller to a specific destination without going through a switchboard.