What is an IVR?
Interactive voice response, or IVR, is an automated telephone system that combines pre-recorded messages or text-to-speech technology with a dual-tone multi-frequency (DTMF) interface to engage callers, allowing them to provide and access information without a live agent.
IVR From Hell
As a retired telephony engineer I cringe when I have to go through what I call the IVR from hell, the worst I have ever heard, worse than Centrelink and that is saying something.
Obviously the designer of this IVR is not a telephony engineer, the number one rule for IVR's is that a customer/member should not have to press more than three buttons to get to the end destination. Australian Super Pty Ltd has seven.
Below is the information from IVR Benchmarks
IVR menus should feature no more than five options in the first menu. Once customers are past the first menu, they should only have to go a maximum of three sub-menus deep before the IVR system meets their needs or transfers them to an agent.