Menu design
Multi-level menus built from your actual call reasons, kept as short as the business allows so callers reach a person fast.
Overview
An IVR should shorten the call, not lengthen it
Almost everyone has been stuck in a bad phone menu: six options, none of them right, no way back, and a recording insisting your call is important. That experience is not caused by the technology. It is caused by nobody mapping out what callers actually ring about before building the tree.
We start with the calls. Which reasons come up most, which need a human immediately, which can be answered by an announcement, and what should happen at 6pm on a Friday. Then we build the flow around those answers — usually with fewer options than the business first expected.
The result is multi-level menus, time and holiday conditions, skills-based distribution, sensible queue overflow and voicemail-to-email, all configured on your PBX and tested end to end before anyone hears it.
Multi-level menusMapped to real call reasons
Time & holiday rulesDifferent flow after hours
Voicemail-to-emailNothing sits unheard
What's included
What we build into your call flow
Designed around your callers, configured and tested before go-live.
Time conditions
Separate routing for working hours, evenings, weekends and bank holidays, so out-of-hours callers get a useful message instead of an endless ring.
Queues & distribution
Skills-based routing, ring strategies and agent groups so the right person picks up — with overflow rules for when everyone is busy.
Overflow & escalation
Defined behaviour when a queue is full or nobody answers: another team, an on-call mobile, or a callback rather than an abandoned call.
Voicemail-to-email
Messages delivered to the right inbox as audio attachments, so nothing sits in a mailbox that nobody remembers to check.
Prompt integration
We integrate professionally recorded prompts, or help you script and source them so the whole flow sounds deliberate rather than improvised.
FAQ
Questions about IVR
Fewer than you think. Three to five at the top level is usually right — beyond that callers stop listening and press whatever they heard last. If you genuinely need more, a second level is better than a long list.
Yes, and we usually recommend it. A zero-out option to reception, or straight-through routing during quiet hours, prevents the menu becoming a wall between you and your customers.
We integrate prompts you supply, and we can help you script them and point you at professional voice artists. Consistency matters more than budget — one voice throughout sounds far better than a mix.
Yes. Holiday conditions are set up alongside your normal time rules, so the flow changes without anyone remembering to flip a switch.
Related
Other services we provide
UK Tier-1 Voice Routes
Premium UK termination on Pay As You Go terms, billed per second.
UK DIDs
Geographic and mobile numbers delivered over SIP to your PBX.
Asterisk PBX Installation
On-premises or cloud builds, fully configured and documented.
Firewall & ACL Configuration
Tight access control so only your traffic ever reaches your PBX.
Web Development
Fast, responsive, search-friendly sites built by the same team.
Fix the menu your callers complain about
Tell us what people ring about most and we will map a flow that gets them answered faster.