Phone menu
What is Phone menu?
A phone menu is the interactive voice response (IVR) prompt tree a caller hears at the start of a call — 'press 1 for sales, press 2 for support' — that lets them pick a destination by keypad tone (DTMF) or by speaking, so the call reaches the right department, self-service task, or queue. A good phone menu is short and shallow: few options per level, the most-requested choices first, and no branch deeper than two or three levels.
More detail
A phone menu is the caller-facing front end of an IVR: the IVR is the system that plays prompts and interprets input, and the menu is the content and structure of the choices it offers. Poorly structured menus — too many options, dead-end branches, no way to reach a person — are the leading source of caller frustration and abandoned calls.
Modern phone menus accept spoken input as well as keypad tones, and the choices a caller makes are passed along with the call so a receiving agent or routing system sees the selections the caller already made instead of asking again.
Frequently asked
- Is a phone menu the same thing as an IVR?
- The terms overlap: the IVR is the underlying interactive voice response system that plays audio and collects input, while a phone menu is the caller-facing list of choices that system presents. In everyday use 'phone menu' and 'IVR' are often used interchangeably.
- How many options should a phone menu have?
- Keep each level to a handful of options — roughly five or fewer — and no more than two or three levels deep. Put the most-requested choices first, state the number before the option, and always give the caller a route to a person rather than trapping them in a loop.
See also
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