The CRM Dialer provides you with the ability to deploy the Interactive Voice Response feature (IVR) with any of your phone numbers. 

When an incoming call is received on an IVR-enabled phone number, the caller will hear a voice message which provides the caller with different menu options. For example, the caller may be prompted to press 1 to talk to sales, press 2 to talk to support, and so forth. 

Based on the caller's IVR response the call will be passed on to a specific user, group, or even to a secondary menu with additional sub-options. 

Setting up IVR with the CRM Dialer can help cut costs and free up agents.

Configuring the CRM Dialer IVR

To configure your Dialer IVR navigate to Manage > Administration > Dialer > Dialer IVR:

As the first step of configuring your IVR, upload the On Hold Recording and the Transfer Prompt recordings and save your changes:

The On Hold Recording is played when a caller is placed on hold (e.g. while waiting for an operator to answer the call). 

The Transfer Prompt recording is played before the call is transferred to the selected operator.

For example, a Transfer Prompt recording may play a message saying "Your call may be monitored or recorded for quality assurance" or a similar message. 

Next, select the phone number you wish to enable IVR on, and click Add:

A new menu (called Main by default) will be created for the selected phone number and you can now proceed to configure the menu's options.

Start by uploading your pre-recorded greeting message, using the Upload Greeting button. 

The greeting message should provide the caller with the available call options as well as what number to press on their dial pad in order to access any of the options.

It is also recommended to include the business hours so that the caller knows when you are available.

After you've uploaded the greeting message click Save Menus:

The name of the recording you uploaded will now be shown on the menu. You can always delete the recording (and replace it with another one) or listen to the recording using the buttons shown next to the Upload Greeting button.

The Loop setting enables you to set the number of times the greeting message will loop for each incoming call:

Additionally, the new menu will show the 10 dial pad options which can be made available to the caller (Press 1, Press 2, ..., Press 0).

Each option can be configured individually to perform one or more actions when pressed:

For example, to select the actions that will be performed when the caller presses 1 on their dial pad, click Press 1 in the menu settings, and then click on the Call user or #, Call Group, or Change Menu buttons.

Each time you click on one of those three buttons a new action item will be added to the menu, and you can then configure the new action item further. 

In the below example, the Press 1 button has been configured to forward the incoming call to a specific user, and if the user does not answer the call within 5 seconds, then the call will be forwarded to the Sales group instead:

When multiple Call User actions are used in sequence, the call will ring to the first user and then progress individually through the list of users if each does not answer.

All users within a group will receive the call when their group is picked for Call Group.

Each action item can be deleted during the menu configuration using the item's Delete button.  

Note that it is possible to use the IVR feature without uploading a greeting message.

In this case, the inbound call will be routed to the first menu on the list, and the action(s) defined within the menu will be triggered normally.

Using Multiple IVR Menus

Each phone number can be set up with multiple IVR menus. To add a new menu, click on the Add New Menu button and configure your menu as described earlier:

Once your new menu has been configured, you can play the second set of menu options to the caller after they press a specific key in the first menu. 

In the below example, the Press 2 option in the Main menu has been configured to route the caller to a second menu called Support, where a different menu message is played (in this case it's the support_options.mp3 recording).

In this way, after a caller presses 2 for support a new message will be played asking the user to select the specific type of support that they are looking for (e.g. general support, terminal support, supplies support, etc.):

After your menus have been fully configured, you may test your configuration using the Test IVR button which simulates a real incoming call: