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Set up IVR for VoiceUpdated 19 hours ago

Interactive Voice Response (IVR) triages inbound calls by providing callers with a menu of customizable options - to either forward their call to a selected phone number or play a message. 

Callers respond to the IVR menu with their dial pad by dialing numbers 1-9 and, if no option is selected or an invalid option is selected, the IVR message will be replayed.

Four actions can be triggered by IVR:

OptionDescriptionResult in ticket
Play messageThe caller will be played a message, 
either a recording or text-to-speech.
No ticket will be created.
Forward call to a
Gorgias number
The call will be routed to the 
selected Gorgias phone number.
A ticket is created through the Gorgias Voice integration selected during IVR, but no ticket is created through the IVR integration itself.
Forward call to an
external number
The call will be routed to an 
external phone number.
No ticket will be created.
Send call to SMSThe caller will be played a message (recording or text-to-speech), and they will receive an SMS message to the number they're calling fromSMS ticket will be created.




IVR tickets

When a caller goes through an IVR flow, the options they've selected aren't logged and tickets aren't always created - these are the scenarios in which tickets are/aren't created:

ScenarioResult in ticket
The caller hears a played message, 
no voicemail left
No ticket created
The caller has their call forwarded to
a Gorgias number, no voicemail left
Ticket created through the forwarded Voice integration
The caller has their call forwarded to
a Gorgias number, leaves a voicemail
Ticket created through the forwarded Voice integration, including the voicemail recording
The caller has their call forwarded to 
an external number
No ticket created
The caller requests the call to be sent to SMS, 
they hear the voice message, receive SMS, 
the call ends
Ticket created through the SMS integration selected in this option settings


Steps

1. Go to Settings -> Channels -> Voice.

2. Click on Add Voice in the top right corner.

3. Enter an Integration title, choose the Phone number, and select Interactive Voice Response (IVR) as the Function.

4. Click the Add Voice button and you'll be redirected to Voice settings.

5. Under Preferences, select whether you'd like to send your customers to voicemail outside business hours.

6. Under Voicemail, you can choose a voice recording, text-to-speech, or none and choose whether you'd like to allow voicemail at all.

7. Under IVR, in the Greeting message section, you can choose a voice recording, text-to-speech, or none.

This is the message that will be played when a caller dials your number - it should include instructions on which options to choose (Dial 1 for Sales, 2 for Support, 3 for Billing...).

8. Still under IVR, in the Menu options section, you can set those IVR options.

If the option Send call to SMS is greyed out, it means that you don't have an SMS integration created on your account.


Play message 

When you select this option, you'll be prompted to either upload a recording or enter text-to-speech.

Forward call to Gorgias number

To have this option enabled, you'll need to select a phone number from the dropdown menu.

Forward call to external number

For this option to work, simply enter the number you want calls to be forwarded to.  

Send call to SMS

You'll be prompted to select SMS integration that will be used for text conversation. SMS can be sent only from native Gorgias integration. You will also need to either upload a recording or enter text-to-speech for the voice recording that the caller will hear when they select this option. Finally, you'll need to customize the message that will be sent to them via SMS.

If you have a US SMS number, please make sure it has passed the verification for sending outbound SMS messages. Read more about this for toll-free numbers and for local numbers.

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