6.5 IVRs

Overview

In this section, you will learn how to configure and manage an IVR service.

An IVR service is the first of two services that manage inbound call flows.

IVR stands for Interactive Voice Response and is often referred to as voice menus. It’s used to describe a system where a caller navigates through a system by using the touch-tone keys on their telephone keypad. An IVR is essentially an announcement / series of announcements. The caller is given the choice of several interactive features, for example: "For Sales, press 1", "For Technical Support, press 2" etc. very much the same as you would get if you were calling your mobile network provider or an online retailer, etc.

When the caller presses a key on their phone keypad, the phone emits two tones, known as DTMF tones. DTMF stands for Dual Tone Multi-Frequency. The DFN cloud telephone system recognises the DTMF tones and responds accordingly.

Please note that despite what the name seems to imply, the IVR service doesn’t provide any capabilities for voice or speech recognition, and will only recognise DTMF tones to navigate the menus.

In this view, you can:

  • Add a new entry

  • Select one, several or all entries and delete them

  • Edit, clone, delete or edit an entry or copy it to a clipboard (you can also edit an entry by double-clicking on it)

  • Select how many entries you want to have on the page

  • Search for an IVR

TIP

You have the option of cloning an IVR if you want to duplicate the IVR with the same or similar settings.