Voice Menus (IVR, Queue, Greetings, More)
"Press 1 for reservations, 2 for support." Build self-service menus that route every caller to exactly the right place.
TL;DR
- What it is — a tree of voice prompts and digit-keyed actions that route callers based on what they press. Greetings, menu prompts, nine action types, sub-menus, time-of-day gating, and custom fallback handlers.
- Who it's for — admins who want every phone number to do something smarter than "ring one extension." Callers experience the routing.
- Top outcome — self-service routing that adapts to business hours, hands off to the right team, and updates the moment you save an edit.
At a glance
| Plan tier | Included with every Lodgestory Voice plan. |
| Who can manage | Account Owners and Admins build menus. Callers interact with them. |
| Action types | Nine — route to an extension, route to an external number, route to a specific agent, route to a department, jump to another menu, drop to voicemail, evaluate a time condition, replay the menu, or hang up. |
| Menu input | Single-digit keypresses: 0 through 9, * and #. |
| Media | Upload audio from your media library, or use text-to-speech for any greeting or prompt. |
| Limits | Twelve menu keys per menu. Menus can call other menus, so deep trees are possible — but two levels is the practical max for callers. |
| API | Partner API available on request. |
How to find it
Sidebar: Settings → Calling → [your account] → Voice Menus.
Direct URLs:
- Voice menu editor:
/crm/settings/calling/{accountId}/ivr - Call flow view:
/crm/settings/calling/{accountId}/call-flow— a read-only map of how every phone number flows through menus, time conditions, and departments.
📸 [SCREENSHOT: voicemenu-landing.png — Voice Menus list with greeting preview, action-count badge, and play buttons]
What is a Voice Menu?
The problem it solves
A phone number without a voice menu rings the same destination no matter what the caller wanted. For a hospitality team that's fatal: reservation inquiries, existing-booking changes, housekeeping requests, and complaints all land at the same ringing extension and the first agent to pick up is playing wrong-question roulette.
A voice menu is the routing brain. "Press 1 for reservations, 2 for existing bookings, 3 for concierge, 0 for front desk." Four clean paths, one number, clear agent specialisation. Chain a sub-menu for concierge, gate the whole thing by business hours so after-hours goes straight to voicemail, and you have a professional front door for every inbound call.
What you get
- A greeting that plays first — uploaded audio or spoken via text-to-speech. Optional.
- A menu prompt that tells the caller their options. Audio or text-to-speech.
- Up to twelve digit actions — one for every key a caller might press, including * and #.
- Nine action types that cover almost every routing decision.
- Keypress timing controls — how long to wait for a press, how many retries to give, how long between digits.
- Custom fallback handlers — what happens if the caller does nothing or presses an invalid key.
- Time-of-day gating — wrap the whole menu in business hours so after-hours calls take a different path.
- Call flow view — a read-only map of how your numbers, time conditions, menus, and departments connect.
The nine action types
| Action | What it does |
|---|---|
| Route to extension | Rings a specific internal extension. |
| Route to external number | Forwards to any phone number — a regional office, a duty line, a third party. |
| Route to agent | Rings a specific agent, regardless of what extension they happen to have. |
| Route to department | Hands the caller to a department's queue so the ring strategy decides who picks up. |
| Jump to another voice menu | Enters a sub-menu — great for nested options like "concierge" leading to restaurants, spa, and airport options. |
| Drop to voicemail | Takes the caller to a voicemail box. |
| Evaluate a time condition | Branches based on business hours, holidays, or any schedule you set. |
| Replay the menu | Repeats the prompt — useful when paired with a retry limit. |
| Hang up | Ends the call politely. |
How it's different
- Edits go live instantly. Change a menu, save, and the next incoming call uses the new configuration.
- Menus can reference menus. Sub-menus let you build clean hierarchies without bloating a single list.
- Time-aware routing is a first-class action, not a hack. Wrap any menu or digit in a time condition and the behavior flips automatically when the window closes.
- Audio or text-to-speech, freely mixed. Use real recordings for the greeting and text-to-speech for a rarely-changing menu, or the other way around.
Customer scenarios
- Hotel main reservations line. "Welcome to Acme Villas." Menu: "Press 1 for new reservations, 2 for existing bookings, 3 for concierge, 0 for front desk." Keys route to the appropriate departments and the front-desk extension. If the caller does nothing, the prompt replays once and then drops to voicemail.
- After-hours routing. The main menu is wrapped in a business-hours time condition. During hours it plays normally. After hours it plays a polite message and sends the caller to voicemail.
- Nested concierge menu. The concierge option leads into a sub-menu with restaurants, spa, and airport options. Callers can press 0 from the sub-menu to return to the main menu.
- Emergency shortcut. The main menu has a 9 that goes straight to the duty manager's personal mobile — one digit to escalate.
How it fits with Lodgestory Voice
- Phone numbers point here. A number's routing can target a voice menu directly.
- Departments can fall back here. A queue that exhausts its wait can fail over to a menu.
- Time conditions can target menus for their open and closed branches.
- Menus can target anything — departments, agents, extensions, voicemail boxes, other menus, and external numbers.
- Audio lives in your media library. Upload once, use across every menu.
Core concepts
| Term | What it means |
|---|---|
| Voice menu | A greeting, a menu prompt, and a dictionary of digit-to-action mappings. |
| Greeting | Optional audio or text-to-speech that plays before the menu prompt. |
| Menu prompt | The instructions the caller hears — "Press 1 for reservations..." |
| Action | What a specific keypress does. One of the nine types. |
| Target | What an action refers to — a department, an agent, a voicemail box, another menu, and so on. |
| Timeout | How long the system waits for a keypress. |
| Retries | How many times the menu repeats before falling back. |
| Invalid handler | The action to take when the caller presses a digit you haven't mapped. Typically "replay." |
| Timeout handler | The action to take when the caller presses nothing and retries run out. Typically voicemail. |
| Time condition | A schedule — weekly hours plus holidays — that can gate a whole menu or a single digit. |
Quick Start — design a two-level menu in eight minutes
Step 1 — Upload your audio
Upload audio in your media library first: a greeting, a main-menu prompt, and an after-hours message.
📸 [SCREENSHOT: vm-qs-1-media.png — media library with three uploaded audio files]
Step 2 — Create the main menu
Settings → Calling → [your account] → Voice Menus → + Add. Name it "Main Reservations Menu." Pick the greeting and the menu prompt. Set the keypress timeout to 5 seconds and retries to 3.
📸 [SCREENSHOT: vm-qs-2-create.png — create dialog with greeting and prompt pickers]
Step 3 — Add actions
For each digit:
- 1 → Route to department → Reservations
- 2 → Route to department → Existing Bookings
- 3 → Jump to another voice menu → leave blank for now; we'll fill it in after creating the concierge menu
- 0 → Route to agent → Manager
Save.
📸 [SCREENSHOT: vm-qs-3-actions.png — actions grid with four digits mapped]
Step 4 — Create the concierge sub-menu
+ Add another menu. Name it "Concierge Sub-Menu." Pick a concierge menu prompt. Map:
- 1 → Route to department → Restaurant Bookings
- 2 → Route to department → Spa
- 3 → Route to agent → Concierge specialist
- 0 → Jump to another voice menu → Main Reservations Menu (so callers can return)
Step 5 — Link back to the main menu
Open the main menu and set the 3 action's target to the concierge sub-menu. Save.
Step 6 — Wrap in business hours
Create a time condition for Monday–Sunday 9am–9pm if you don't have one. Open the main menu and wrap its entry in the time condition: during open hours → the menu itself; during closed hours → a voicemail box or a hangup message.
📸 [SCREENSHOT: vm-qs-6-time.png — time condition picker wrapping a voice menu]
Step 7 — Route a phone number to the menu
Go to Phone Numbers, pick your reservations number, set routing type to Voice Menu, and select the main menu.
Step 8 — Test
Call the number during business hours. Hear the greeting, the menu, press each digit, and confirm routing. Then call after hours and confirm the closed greeting and voicemail.
What's next
- Tune the keypress timeout based on how quickly your callers press.
- Add a 9 that goes straight to an emergency escalation number.
- Audit usage in Reports → Call Log.
How it works
- A call arrives at a phone number whose routing is set to a voice menu.
- Lodgestory answers the call, plays the greeting if you configured one, then plays the menu prompt.
- The system collects the caller's keypress within the timeout you set.
- The mapped action fires — routing to a department, agent, voicemail, another menu, or any of the nine types.
- If the caller presses nothing and retries run out, the timeout handler fires. If they press an unmapped digit, the invalid handler fires.
- Time-condition-wrapped menus automatically switch branches at the hour you configured — no manual action required.
You build the tree in the admin, save, and the next call uses the new configuration.
Features in depth
Voice menu list and editor
The list shows every menu with its name, a play button for the greeting and the menu prompt, and a badge for how many actions are configured. Clicking a menu opens the editor.
The editor covers every part of the tree in one form:
- Greeting — toggle on/off, pick an audio file or type text.
- Menu prompt — same picker, audio or text.
- Timing — keypress timeout (1–30 seconds), between-digit timeout, max retries.
- Actions grid — twelve rows, one per possible digit, each with an action-type dropdown and the target picker for that type.
- Invalid handler and timeout handler — the fallback actions.
📸 [SCREENSHOT: vm-editor.png — voice menu editor with greeting, prompt, timing, and all twelve action rows]
Action type picker
Each action type shows only the fields it needs:
| Action | Fields |
|---|---|
| Route to extension | Extension number |
| Route to external number | Phone number, optional caller ID override |
| Route to agent | Agent picker |
| Route to department | Department picker |
| Jump to another voice menu | Menu picker |
| Drop to voicemail | Voicemail box picker |
| Evaluate a time condition | Time condition picker, plus open and closed targets |
| Replay the menu | No fields |
| Hang up | Optional message |
Call flow view
A read-only visualisation showing every phone number on the left, the menus and time conditions in the middle, and the eventual destinations (departments, voicemail, external numbers) on the right. Edges label the digits that lead from one node to another. Perfect for auditing your setup at a glance — edits still happen in the voice menu editor itself.
📸 [SCREENSHOT: call-flow.png — read-only call flow diagram with numbers, menus, and departments connected by labeled edges]
Media picker integration
Every audio field opens a picker that lists files in your media library with name, duration, upload date, and a play button. New files can be uploaded inline; they're auto-transcoded for voice and selectable as soon as the upload finishes.
Simulate mode
Where enabled, you can walk through a menu in the admin without placing a real call — click digits and see which action would fire. Handy for checking a complex tree before going live.
Roles & permissions
| Action | Account Owner | Admin | User |
|---|---|---|---|
| View voice menu list | Yes | Yes | Read-only |
| Create, edit, delete a voice menu | Yes | Yes | No |
| Upload audio | Yes | Yes | No |
Connections
- Phone Numbers — route a number to a menu.
- Departments — the most common menu action target; a department's failover can also loop back to a menu.
- Time conditions — gate menus by business hours or custom schedules.
- Other voice menus — build multi-level trees.
- Voicemail boxes — drop callers to voicemail as a timeout handler or a dedicated key.
Limits a user will run into
| Limit | Value |
|---|---|
| Menu keys per menu | Twelve (0–9, *, #) |
| Keypress timeout | 1–30 seconds |
| Max retries | 0–10 |
| Sub-menu depth | Technically unbounded; two levels is the practical maximum |
| Media file size | Set by your media library upload limits |
| Voice menus per account | No hard cap |
Errors & FAQ
How quickly do edits take effect?
Immediately. Save the menu and the next incoming call uses the new configuration.
Can I play different prompts based on the caller's language?
Not natively in a single menu. The clean workaround is a first-level menu that asks the caller to choose a language, then branches into a language-specific menu for each.
What happens if I delete an audio file that a menu is using?
The menu falls back to silence or a default tone. Keep audio files referenced while they're in use; delete only when you're sure nothing references them.
Can the same menu be attached to multiple phone numbers?
Yes. Build once, reuse across every number that should follow the same routing.
Why does a specific key not advance on some calls?
Occasionally a combination of caller device and phone provider handles keypresses differently. If you see this for a specific number range, contact support with a call example.
Can I nest menus more than two levels deep?
Technically yes, but callers get lost. Two levels is the practical max. If you need more logic, consider handing off to an AI voice agent that can hold a longer conversation.
Troubleshooting
| Symptom | Likely cause | Fix |
|---|---|---|
| Caller hears silence where a greeting should play | The audio file is missing or the wrong format | Re-upload through the media library; it transcodes for you |
| Caller hears text-to-speech instead of your uploaded audio | The audio field was left blank and the menu fell through to text | Set the audio file on the greeting or prompt |
| Save fails with an invalid target error | An action references something that no longer exists — a deleted department, voicemail box, or agent | Re-pick the target |
| A sub-menu never exits | Two menus point to each other with no way out | Add a terminal action (voicemail, hangup, or route to a department) somewhere in the cycle |
Changelog
- Apr 2026 — General availability with nine action types, time-condition gating, and the read-only call flow view.
Related modules
- Phone Numbers — the starting point of every voice menu flow.
- Departments — the most common destination for a menu key.
- Agents — targets of "route to agent" actions.
- Call Recording & Voicemail — where "drop to voicemail" actions lead.
- Voice product hub — the overall picture.
Updated about 3 hours ago