Most companies and small businesses use automated phone menus to handle a large volume of incoming calls to provide information 24/7.
Most of them use IVR menus, aka Interactive Voice Response call attendant. It's basically AI virtual attendants using speech recognition technology to interact with the caller.
Here is how to set it up
Choose The Right IVR Service Provider
Our 4 choices are:
Five9
- Simple to use
- Best for call center
Ring Central
- For small businesses ($34.99/month premium plan)
8X8
- Easily build IVR path with drag and drop feature (X6 plan $85/ month)
- Software analyzes the customer journey
- Skills based routing
Talkdesk
- Visualize IVR flow structure with real time error flagging
- Provides AI driven insights
Choose A Business Phone Number
You can pick a local or toll free number for your small business. If you already have a business phone line that you would like to use, you can port the number.
In addition, multiple phone numbers to the same phone menu can be assigned. It basically means the caller can either call local, toll free or international number. All of them will be directed to the same phone menu.
Create Phone Menu Options
Setup a call flow structure you want the caller to interact with.
Please create a list of options for example:
- Press 1 for appointment
- Press 2 for emergency
- Press 3 to connect to the first available agent
Other routing options include:
- Place on hold queue
- Conference call
- Dial known party extension
- Pay by phone
- Authentication
Create Greeting Message
Come up with a greeting script. You record your own voice or use text to speech software.
We highly recommend using Murf or DescriptAI for professional quality.
Once you have the audio file ready, simply upload them to the IVR software you're using.