Digital Receptionist or IVR

Information

The IVR module provides the interface used to setup
your auto attendant or digital receptionist when people call your PBX. Normally heard as
"Thanks you for calling MYBUSINESS, for Sales press 1, for
Service press 2", etc.

Planning

While the urge is strong just to dive in by clicking on IVR,
you should resist this impulse.

First, draw out on paper what
you intend to to achieve. Run it by the customer (or your
officemates). Write out word-for-word what all the recordings are
going to be.

The proper flow to build a good
IVR is:

1. Planning

2. Customer agreement with the
   plan.

3. Record the audio prompts
   using System Recordings and an extension.

4. Create any destinations
   that don't currently exist (queues, ring groups, day/night modes or
   time conditions).

5. Test all of these. One way
   to do this is use miscellaneous destinations, assigning a * feature
   code to whatever thing you want to test.

6. Then go create your IVR.

7. Show it to the customer,
   and then make the inevitable changes.

8. Now upgrade the voice
   prompts to a paid voice or designated employee (the office manager
   or receptionist, etc.)

9. Bask in glory!

Standard IVR Examples:

1. Office / Light industrial

   1. Welcome to BUSINESSNAME.
      Please listen carefully as our options have changed. If you know
      the extension of the person you are trying to reach, you may dial
      it at any time. Press 1 for sales, press 2 for customer service,
      press 3 for administration, press 4 for Press inquiries, press 5
      for office directions,press # to access the company directory, or
      press 0 for the operator.

2. Hospitality

   1. Welcome to HOTELNAME.
      Please listen carefully as our options have changed. If you know
      the room # of the guest you are trying to reach, you may dial it at
      any time. Press 1 for reservations, press 2 for the front desk,
      press 3 for event sales, press 4 for hotel administration, press 5
      for hotel directions, press # to access the hotel directory, or
      press 0 for the operator.

3. Engineering/Product Company
   with Direct Sales and Support

   1. Welcome to BUSINESSNAME.
      Please listen carefully as our options have changed. If you know
      the extension of the person you are trying to reach, you may dial
      it at any time. Press 1 for sales, press 2 for customer service,
      press 3 for technical support, press 4 for administration, press 5
      for Press inquiries, press 6 for office directions, press # to
      access the company directory, or press 0 for the operator.

4. Retail

   1. Welcome to BUSINESSNAME.
      Please listen carefully as our options have changed. If you know
      the extension of the person you are trying to reach, you may dial
      it at any time. Press 1 for sales, press 2 for customer service,
      press 3 for store hours, locations, and directions, press 4 for
      administration, press 5 for Press inquiries, press # to access the
      company directory, or press 0 for the operator.

Making recordings

Fire up the System Recordings module. 3.3.5.1 is used here.

I strongly suggest you use an extension connected to the PBX to
make your recordings. They'll be quick and in the right format and
you can worry about getting everything else right. When everything is
all finished, you can come back and replace those temporary
recordings with paid or improved versions.

To use your extension to make a recording, enter your extension in
Step 1 and press Go. Don't skip this and go to Step 2, or you'll get
a cryptic error.

Now dial *77 and make your recording after the beep. Dial *99 to
listen to it. You don't have to be the person doing this – I often
enter a customer's extension and have a customer do this part while I
do the GUI work.

If the recording is good enough (and don't obsess here yet), name
the recording and press Save.

For lame and silly reasons, spaces are not allowed in the names.

You can listen to your recording and add on other recordings (such
as the built-in recordings) by clicking on your recording in the
right tool panel.

We're going to start with a simple 1-level IVR , so the single
Welcome-to-ACME recording will be enough.

Now that we've created a system recording, we can create our IVR.

Creating the IVR

When you select IVR, the first page is now a brief set of
instructions on how to drive the IVR. You can either edit an IVR, if
one is existing, or create a new one by clicking on 'Add IVR'.

Editing your IVR
This creates the IVR (and calls it 'Unnamed') as soon as you
click 'Add' - You'll see it appear on the right straight away.

These are your options:

• Change Name: This is simply
  the descriptive name that appears on the right, and in the drop-down
  menu of Destinations

• Timeout: This is the amount
  of time the system waits before sending the call to the 't'
  destination

• Enable Directory: If you
  switch this on, users will be able to dial the FeatureCodes">feature
  code for Directory, usually #, from the IVR and access the
  Directory service.

• Directory Context: This
  is the asterisk context of the directory. Advanced users can then
  use different IVRs to create a multi-tenant installation.

• Enable Direct Dial: If you
  enable that, users will, in addition to being able to dial the IVR
  options, be able to directly dial an Extension
  number.

• Announcement: A System
  Recording that is played to users when they enter the IVR. This
  can be set to 'nothing'. These announcements are great for “today
  is July 4th and we're closed for the holiday” and then
  proceeding on to the regular call flow.

Configuring your IVR

In the box on the left, enter the option for the user. This may be
one, or a series of numbers, or, 'i', or 't'. 'i' and 't' have
special meanings:

• i: This overrides the
  default invalid choice behavior, which is to play a 'invalid option'
  message and immediately replay the current menu. E.G. If you only
  have 1 2 and 3 defined, and caller pushes 4, it will jump to this
  destination.

• t: This overrides the default timeout behavior, which
  is to play the menu three times and hangup. A standard configuration
  is to go the operator, to handle customers that don't have
  DTMF-capable phones.

Options are only displayed if there is at least one entry created.
For example, queues will not appear as a possible IVR destination if
no queues exist.

Use 'Increase Options' or 'Decrease Options'
to alter the number of options available. This won't let you decrease
it to less than the number of options that are currently set.

To
delete an option, simply leave the selection blank.

When
you're finished, click 'Save' and you have your new IVR.

To test it, give it an incoming route or set up a Miscellaneous Application (* code) to reach it.

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