Interactive Voice Response (IVR)
An Interactive Voice Response (IVR) is the automated phone menu that answers an inbound call before a person does.
Definition
An Interactive Voice Response (IVR) is the automated phone menu that answers an inbound call before a person does. It works out what the caller needs and routes the call. The caller hears a prompt, presses a keypad digit or speaks, and either self-serves or lands in the right agent queue.
Where you build that menu depends on which voice product your org runs. On Agentforce Contact Center with native Salesforce Voice telephony, the menu is a flow element in Setup. You write the prompt and define the accepted keypad inputs inside an Omni-Channel Flow. On Salesforce Voice with Amazon Connect or a partner platform, the menu lives in the telephony layer instead. Salesforce still supplies the CRM data, screen pop, and routing.
Salesforce now treats the keypad tree as the older half of the picture, and points new builds at conversational AI agents instead.
In plain English
“Think of the phone menu you hear when you call a bank. A recorded voice asks what you need, you press a number or say a few words, and it sends you to the right person. That menu is the IVR. It can also answer the easy questions itself.”
Worked example
A regional credit union puts 4,000 calls a week through Agentforce Contact Center. Its inbound Omni-Channel Flow opens with a Play Prompt element. Every caller hears "Press 1 for card disputes, 2 for loan servicing" and answers on the keypad. Response Details is toggled on, with DTMF response values of 1 and 2 and both input lengths set to 1. A 6-second response timeout replays the prompt when the caller stays silent. A Get Records element looks up the Contact by phone number and reads the account tier. When the tier is Premier and the caller pressed 1, a Decision element routes the work item to the Card Disputes Priority queue. Everyone else falls through to the standard queue.
Where the menu actually gets built, and who owns it
Why ownership comes before prompt design
That split has a consequence that shows up months later, in change control. Where the telephony is native, the menu is metadata: it versions and deploys like any other artifact in your repo. Where an outside platform carries the call, none of that holds. No change set, no deployment pipeline. A wording edit routes through whoever holds the telephony console, usually a different team on a different cadence. That is why a two-word script change can sit in a queue for three weeks.
The three timers people mix up
Three separate timers live in the Play Prompt panel, and they get confused constantly. Timeout Length belongs to the element and caps how long the flow waits before moving on. Response Timeout is the caller's window to start entering input once the prompt finishes. Digit Response Timeout is the gap between keypresses that tells the element the caller is done.
Data dips, and why you look the caller up first
A data dip is a mid-call lookup that turns a generic greeting into a personal one. Natively, a Get Records element keyed on the caller's number returns a contact name, an open case, or an account tier. A Decision element branches on whatever comes back. Under Amazon Connect the equivalent runs through a Lambda, and data returns as contact attributes. A Set contact attributes block writes a name with the sfdc- prefix matching a custom field's API name. The InvokeTelephonyIntegrationApiFunction Lambda then lands that value on the Voice Call record.
The handoff: Route Work, queues, and the screen pop
Most calls do not end in the menu, so the last job is the transfer. That is the Route Work element, set to the Phone service channel, aimed at a queue or a service agent with a fallback behind it. Omni-Channel then matches the work item to an available rep. Everything gathered upstream rides along, so the rep opens on a screen pop showing the matched record and the stated reason for calling. Supervisors get one workload view across voice, cases, and messaging rather than a separate telephony console.
Agentforce Voice is eating the keypad menu
Salesforce is blunt about direction. Its Agentforce Voice documentation describes AI voice agents as replacing traditional IVR menus, holding a conversation instead of reading a numbered list. The caller states a request in plain words, the agent reads intent, then resolves it against live CRM data or escalates with context attached. The pitch is deflection and round-the-clock coverage, plus no nested tree to get lost in. In practice teams keep a keypad fallback for noisy lines, accessibility, and callers who would rather press 2.
Open CTI has a deadline worth planning around
Before any of this, orgs bolted an outside IVR onto Salesforce with Open CTI. The external system ran the call, and Open CTI handled the browser side: screen pop, click-to-dial, call controls. Open CTI now sits in maintenance mode with no new features. It is already unavailable to newly created Agentforce Service orgs, and it retires in February 2028. Migrating is not one project. You pick a telephony model first, and that decides how much menu logic survives and how many screen pops need re-pointing. Treat the runway as shorter than it looks.
Configure an IVR in an Omni-Channel Flow
The native path, for orgs on Agentforce Contact Center with Salesforce Voice telephony. Confirm Enhanced Omni-Channel is enabled first, because the IVR settings depend on it.
- Open the inbound Omni-Channel flow
From Setup, enter Flows in the Quick Find box, select Flows, and open the flow tied to your voice channel. No flow yet? Click New Flow and pick Omni-Channel Flow.
- Add Play Prompt
In the canvas, click to add Play Prompt, then give it a name, description, and Timeout Length. Set Prompt Type to Message and pick a language and voice profile, or Media for a pre-recorded file. Preview Voice plays it back.
- Define the responses and the timers
Toggle Response Details on. Under Define Dual Tone Multi Frequency (DTMF) Response Values, click Add Values and enter each input you expect. Set Minimum and Maximum Input Length to match, both 1 for a single-digit menu. Then set Response Timeout and Digit Response Timeout.
- Branch and route
Add a Decision element off the captured output resource, then close each branch with Route Work on the Phone service channel. Give every branch a fallback queue.
- Connect it and place real calls
Attach the flow to the voice channel under Communication Channels, then test each branch live, including the silent caller and an unlisted digit.
How long the element waits for input before it retries the prompt.
The inputs you expect, such as 1 for disputes and 2 for servicing.
How many digits count as a complete answer. A single-digit menu sets both to 1.
The language and synthesized voice that reads a Message prompt.
- Minimum and Maximum Input Length have to match the answer you asked for. Collect a six-digit account number with the maximum at 1 and you capture one digit.
- Play Prompt validates the entry against the DTMF Response Values list. Offer a digit in the prompt that the list omits and the caller just hears the prompt again.
- Test the no-input path deliberately. Callers set the phone down, Response Timeout fires, the prompt replays. Decide what happens on the third pass.
Prefer this walkthrough as its own page? How to Interactive Voice Response (IVR) in Salesforce, step by step
How organizations use Interactive Voice Response (IVR)
Absorbs storm-season spikes with a two-option menu that answers outage-status questions from a record lookup and queues only the callers reporting something new.
Collects the account number by keypad, then dips into the Contact record. The rep opens on a screen pop showing the balance, not an identity check.
Trust & references
Cross-checked against the following references.
Straight from the source - Salesforce's reference material on Interactive Voice Response (IVR).
Hands-on resources to go deeper on Interactive Voice Response (IVR).
About the Author
Dipojjal Chakrabarti is a B2C Solution Architect with 29 Salesforce certifications and over 13 years in the Salesforce ecosystem. He writes and edits salesforcedictionary.com, published by KineticBit Inc., to help admins, developers, architects, and cert/interview candidates sharpen their fundamentals. More about Dipojjal.
Test your knowledge
+5 pts / dayQ1. In Agentforce Contact Center with native Salesforce Voice telephony, where do you configure the IVR prompt and its DTMF values?
Q2. A caller says nothing after the IVR prompt plays. What does the response timeout control?
Q3. Under the Amazon Connect telephony model, how does an IVR selection end up on a custom field of the Voice Call record?
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