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An IVR (Interactive Voice Response) menu answers incoming calls with a recorded or synthesised greeting and presents callers with a set of options they select using their phone’s keypad. Rather than every call ringing a single number and relying on someone to manually redirect it, an IVR handles the sorting automatically — routing callers to Sales, Support, Accounts, or any other destination without any manual intervention. This reduces wait times, improves the caller experience, and frees your team to focus on the calls that are relevant to them.

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Creating an IVR Menu

1

Go to IVR Menus in the left navigation

Log in to your Kallin dashboard and select IVR Menus from the left-hand menu. You’ll see a list of any menus you’ve already created.
2

Click Create IVR Menu

Click the Create IVR Menu button in the top-right corner to open the menu builder.
3

Give the menu a name

Enter a descriptive internal name for the menu, such as “Main Menu” or “Out-of-Hours Menu”. This name is only visible to you in the dashboard — callers do not hear it.
4

Upload or record a greeting message

Add the audio your callers will hear when the menu answers. Your greeting should clearly list all the options available, for example: “Thank you for calling Kallin. Press 1 for Sales, Press 2 for Support, or Press 0 to speak with reception.” See Greeting Messages below for the full range of options.
5

Add menu options

For each key you want to assign (digits 0–9, *, and #), click Add Option, select the key, and choose a destination. You do not need to assign every key — only the ones you announce in your greeting. See Menu Option Destinations below for the full list of available destinations.
6

Set a timeout action

Choose what happens if a caller does not press any key within a set number of seconds after the greeting finishes. Common choices are to replay the greeting, transfer to a default destination, or send the caller to voicemail.
7

Set an invalid key action

Choose what happens if a caller presses a key that has no assigned option. You can play a short message such as “Sorry, that option wasn’t recognised” and replay the greeting, or redirect them to a default destination.
8

Save and assign the IVR to a routing rule or directly to a number

Click Save Menu. To activate it, either assign the IVR as a destination in a Call Routing rule, or navigate to your number settings and set this IVR as the direct answer destination.

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Greeting Messages

Your IVR greeting is the first thing callers hear, so it should be clear, professional, and concise. Kallin supports three methods for providing a greeting:
Text-to-speech greetings use UK English voices. Both male and female voice options are available in the dashboard. You can preview any voice before saving your selection.
Each key press in your IVR can route to any of the following destinations:

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Nested IVR Menus

You can build multi-level menu structures by routing a key press to another IVR menu. This is useful when a single top-level option needs further sub-options. For example:
  • Main Menu: “Press 1 for Sales, Press 2 for Support”
    • Key 1 → Sales Sub-Menu: “Press 1 for New Enquiries, Press 2 for Existing Customers”
    • Key 2 → Support Sub-Menu: “Press 1 for Technical Support, Press 2 for Billing”
To set this up, create each sub-menu first, then return to the parent menu and assign the relevant key to the sub-menu as its destination. You can nest menus as many levels deep as needed, though we recommend keeping the overall structure simple to avoid confusing callers.
Keep your top-level menu to five options or fewer. Research consistently shows that callers stop listening after the fourth option — if your menu runs longer, callers either hang up or press a random key. If you need more than five options, use nested sub-menus to group related choices rather than listing everything at the top level.

Call Routing

Create time-based and condition-based routing rules that send calls to your IVR menus at the right moment.

Voicemail

Set up voicemail boxes to use as IVR destinations when callers reach you outside of hours.