Khattak Solutions Infrastructure
IVR Solutions
A good menu has two levels and gets the caller to a person who can help.
Is this you?
- Reception transfers nearly every call, and knows it.
- Customers wait in a queue for a team that cannot help them.
- Out-of-hours callers hear nothing useful.
- You have no idea where calls actually go once they arrive.
If more than one of those is true, the problem is usually the system around the work rather than the people doing it.
What we design
Call menus, department routing, business-hours handling, overflow and out-of-hours behaviour, queue announcements and distribution rules, built around your actual team structure.
Measured, then improved
We report on where callers drop, which options are unused and where queues build, then adjust the tree. An IVR is a product, not a one-time configuration.
Most IVR is designed for the business, not the caller
Seven options read slowly, three of which route to the same desk, and no way back if the caller chooses wrong. The caller presses zero, or hangs up and calls a competitor.
A good menu is short, says the most-wanted option first, repeats nothing, and gets a caller to a person in one or two choices. We design from call data — what people actually ring about — rather than from the org chart.
What we build
- Call menus and sub-menus kept deliberately shallow
- Department, skill and language-based routing
- Queues with position and wait-time announcements, and callback rather than hold
- Time-of-day, holiday and out-of-hours handling
- Priority routing for named accounts or existing tickets
- Account lookup from the calling number before the caller says anything
- Voicemail and missed-call handling that creates a task, not a dead end
Identify the caller before they explain themselves
Where the number is recognised, the system can greet the caller by account, skip qualification they have already given, route them to the person who owns the relationship, and pop the record on that person’s screen before they answer.
Accessible by design
Menus are usable by callers using a screen reader or a relay service, keypad entry always has a spoken equivalent, timeouts are long enough for someone who needs longer, and there is always a route to a human. This is a legal requirement in several markets we serve and a sensible default everywhere.
How the work runs
01 — Call analysis
What callers actually ring about and where those calls currently end up.
02 — Flow design
Menu structure mapped and reviewed as a diagram before anything is recorded.
03 — Recording
Professional prompts, consistent voice, multiple languages where needed.
04 — Build
Routing, queues, schedules, escalation and failure handling.
05 — Testing
Every path walked, including the ones that fail — no answer, no input, wrong input, out of hours.
06 — Tuning
Abandonment and transfer rates reviewed after live traffic, then adjusted.
What it costs
A one-off design and build fee, with prompt recording quoted separately where professional voice is required. Multiple languages multiply the recording cost, not the build cost.
What moves the number
- Number of menus, sub-menus and routing destinations
- Languages required
- Whether account lookup and CRM integration are included
- Queue behaviour — callback, position announcements, overflow
- Professional voice recording versus synthesised prompts
- Reporting and call-flow analytics depth
Every proposal is a fixed price against a written scope. We do not quote by the hour for work we have specified.
What's included
- Interactive voice response design
- Automated call menus
- Department and skills-based routing
- Business-hours and holiday handling
- Queue management and announcements
- Call distribution rules
- Multilingual prompts
- Routing analytics and reporting
Common questions
How many menu levels should we have?
Two, in most cases. Beyond that, abandonment climbs faster than the routing accuracy improves.
Can callers reach a person directly?
Yes, and they should be able to. We always include a path to a live agent.
Can prompts be in more than one language?
Yes — multilingual trees with language selection at entry are standard.
How many options should a menu have?
Three or four, with the most-requested first. Beyond five, callers stop listening and press something at random, which costs you more in misrouted calls than the menu saves.
Can callers reach a human?
Always. A menu with no route to a person is a complaint generator, and in some markets an accessibility problem. There is always an escape.
Can it recognise our existing customers?
Yes, by calling number against your CRM. They can be greeted by name, routed to their account owner, and skip questions they have already answered.
What happens out of hours?
Whatever you decide — an informative message with the next opening time, voicemail that creates a task, routing to an on-call phone, or a callback booking. The default of silence is the one option we will argue against.
Have a project?
Let's build
what's next.
Whether you need customer acquisition, software, automation or communications infrastructure, we will design the right solution around your business.
Start a project