Support and sales

Interactive voice response (IVR) solution

Build a modern IVR solution with Twilio to improve your customer experience with logic and AI-based self-service while reducing the need for agent intervention.

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Woman smiling while talking on phone with AI chat messages confirming an appointment.
Woman smiling while talking on phone with AI chat messages confirming an appointment.

What’s possible with an intelligent IVR solution?

Improve your customer experience without adding complexity for agents.

  • Chat bubble with clock

    Call routing

    Route calls to the right person or department automatically to assist customers quickly.
  • Mobile notification

    Agent escalation

    Escalate calls to agents who can use context gathered by the IVR to pick up where it left off.
  • Package with heart

    Self-service automation

    Complete order processing, bill pay, appointment scheduling, and information retrieval without an agent.
  • User speech bubble

    AI virtual agents

    Deflect calls to virtual agents that can provide conversational AI experiences to save agent bandwidth.
  • Chat Bubble

    Proactive notifications

    Confirm appointments, provide critical account updates, and confirm delivery details quickly and easily.
  • Earth with a chat bubble icon

    Emergency notifications

    Make it easy for people to get critical information at scale without tying up phone lines.

How to build a modern IVR

Create a custom IVR solution to expand and modernize your contact center.

Flowchart showing the process for gathering user inputs and routing calls using different widgets.
Flowchart showing the process for gathering user inputs and routing calls using different widgets.

Twilio products for IVR

Build a modern IVR solution with a strong connectivity foundation and customize with the exact functionality you need.

Step to setup

Options

Features

Learn more

1. Phone number

  • Buy a Twilio phone number
  • Port in a phone number

200+ number types, 100+ countries

Use your existing number
 

2. Connectivity

  • Use Twilio Super Network
  • Bring your own carrier (BYOC)

4,500 global carrier connections

Use your existing PSTN carrier

3. Build

 
  • Code with TwiML
     
  • Drag and drop in Studio

<Pay>, <Gather>,
<Say> commands to
handle common tasks

Low/no-code editor, templates for IVR flows

 
Explore TwiML                  
 

Explore Studio 
 

4. Channels

 
  • Make or receive calls with Voice APIs
     
  • Send follow-up texts with Messaging

Text-to-speech, call
recording, Voice
Intelligence and Voice
Insights

SMS, MMS, WhatsApp, reliable real-time delivery


Explore Voice 


Explore Messaging          

Build and launch your new IVR in days

Sign up for a free Twilio account to start building your new IVR flows today. Use quickstarts, up-to-date docs, the Twilio CLI, and Code Exchange to build a prototype quickly.

from twilio.twiml.voice_response import VoiceResponse

from ivr_phone_tree_python import app
from ivr_phone_tree_python.view_helpers import twiml


@app.route('/')
@app.route('/ivr')
def home():
    return render_template('index.html')


@app.route('/ivr/welcome', methods=['POST'])
def welcome():
    response = VoiceResponse()
    with response.gather(
        num_digits=1, action=url_for('menu'), method="POST"
    ) as g:
        g.say(message="Thanks for calling the E T Phone Home Service. " +
              "Please press 1 for directions." +
              "Press 2 for a list of planets to call.", loop=3)
    return twiml(response)


@app.route('/ivr/menu', methods=['POST'])
def menu():
    selected_option = request.form['Digits']
    option_actions = {'1': _give_instructions,
                      '2': _list_planets}

    if option_actions.has_key(selected_option):
        response = VoiceResponse()
        option_actions[selected_option](response)
        return twiml(response)

    return _redirect_welcome()

Build your first phone tree

Follow along with this quickstart to learn how to set up your first IVR phone tree with Twilio.

Quick deploy a basic IVR

Use our pre-built app in Code Exchange to deploy a basic IVR that uses SMS and Voice in minutes.

Tips for speech recognition and virtual agent bots with voice calling

Improve your IVR speech recognition performance with 11 best practices from our product team.

Prefer not to code? No problem. 

Work with one of our trusted partners to get coding support or explore a pre-built notifications solution. Find a partner

Why use Twilio to build an IVR solution

Increase customer satisfaction while reducing cost to resolution.

Man smiling and talking on a phone in an office setting with bookshelves in the background.
Man smiling and talking on a phone in an office setting with bookshelves in the background.

Start with a single IVR add-on, or modernize your entire IVR system. With Twilio, you can scale to manage huge call volumes with self-serve automation to reduce call center costs and preserve agent bandwidth.

1M+ monthly inbound calls
handled by Marks & Spencer’s new IVR

Work smarter, not harder. Add AI virtual agents with one click to offer natural language assistance, instead of rigid menus that lack context and confuse. Create customized virtual agent flows that understand caller intent.

86% of consumers
say personalized experiences increase their loyalty

There’s no need to rip and replace. Add Twilio IVR to your existing contact center to quickly expand your functionality. Then fine-tune your experience with new features or flows as you realize you need them.

97% of companies
expect to 2X their digital customer engagement investment

See what else you can do

Support and sales

Amplify customer support with AI self-service, AI assistance, and cross-channel engagement.

Contact center

Support customers your way with contact center tools that adapt as your business grows.

Call tracking

Turn call data into action with tracking that reveals ROI, intent, and customer sentiment.

FAQs

Yes, the Twilio platform is built to be flexible and modular, so you can build the exact solution you need for your use case. You won’t be restricted by out-of-the-box workflows. You can fine-tune your menus and workflows through Twilio Studio’s visual editor and publish them in real-time.

Here’s a tutorial on how to customize workflows with Twilio Studio.

The Twilio platform seamlessly integrates with your tech stack. Because it’s modular by nature, our IVR solutions work with a wide range of CRMs, help desk software, UCaaS, CCaaS, on-prem software, and business applications. Whether you use Salesforce, Zendesk, HubSpot, Avaya Aura or Cisco UCCE, you can connect your Twilio IVR to retrieve customer data, update records, or trigger workflows. This integration flexibility means you can modernize your IVR without ripping and replacing your existing infrastructure.

Yes. Twilio IVR solutions can be paired with Conversational Intelligence to understand natural language, generate summaries, analyze sentiment, and create transcripts. You can also use a native integration between Twilio Voice and Google Dialogflow CX to create rich conversational AI experiences through Dialogflow's Interactive Voice Response (IVR). 

You can also integrate ConversationRelay into your IVR for a voice AI agent that provides human-friendly experiences. This allows customers to speak fluidly with a Voice AI agent instead of navigating rigid keypad menus to make interactions more efficient. ConversationRelay can be given access to customer profiles to bring context to the conversation in real-time. Your Voice AI agent can reference recent purchase or customer support inquiries to speed up interactions.

Learn more about ConversationRelay and Conversational Intelligence. And for more advanced tips, check out our post on speech recognition and virtual agent bots with voice calls.

Twilio offers transparent, pay-as-you-go pricing for IVR solutions, with no long-term contracts or upfront commitments required. Twilio pricing is usage-based, so it provides cost flexibility to scale up or down as you need.

View our pricing page for more detailed information.

You can design, test, and update your IVR quickly—often within hours or days vs. weeks or months. The timeline depends on the complexity of your IVR flows. A simple IVR can be set up with Twilio’s visual builder, Studio, in 30 minutes. Or you can build a custom IVR with complex workflows and features, like database lookups, integrations, and speech recognition in hours or days. 

Here’s our guide on How to build an IVR with Twilio Studio. You can also start with our code sample for a basic IVR to speed up your development.

With Twilio Studio, you can create and modify IVR call flows using an intuitive drag-and-drop interface without the need for technical coding skills. Studio is a visual workflow builder that allows you to build workflows for your IVR, like how to handle incoming calls, gather input and route customers to the right team.

If you have more complex workflows or integrations for your IVR, you may need to pull in a person with technical expertise to help or advise on the best way to build it.

Here’s our guide on How to build an IVR with Twilio Studio.

Yes, Twilio’s cloud-based infrastructure is designed to scale elastically. It can automatically handle spikes in call volume from tens to millions of calls without interruption. Your IVR system will be reliably available during peak periods, like seasonal spikes or unexpected surges.

Learn more about Twilio infrastructure  and how we deliver on our commitment to reliability.

Twilio is committed to security and compliance and has built features into every layer of our platform. When you build your IVR flows, there are a number of best practices you can follow to handle data securely:

  • Always use TLS to encrypt data transmitted between your IVR, Twilio, and backend storage
  • Use strong authentication protocols for people accessing IVR data
  • Collect only the data you need for the IVR workflow and avoid storing sensitive information unless necessary
  • Use features like PII Redaction and Voice Recording Encryption
  • Security by design principles throughout the product lifecycle.

See our commitment to security to learn more about our credentials and standards.

Twilio offers built-in analytics through Voice Insights, which delivers quantitative metrics such as call duration, call quality, and branded calling impressions. Conversational Intelligence adds the qualitative context behind those numbers by capturing sentiment analysis, script adherence for live agents, and virtual agent performance through the ConversationRelay connector. Together, they provide a complete 360° view of your customer experience and the measurable ROI stakeholders expect.

You also have the freedom to integrate third-party analytics tools for deeper analysis.

See what you can do with Voice Insights and Conversational Intelligence.

You can build in logic to escalate calls to live agents from your IVR if the customer prefers to speak with a human. Twilio IVR has intelligent call routing based on caller input, interaction context, or IVR failure to ensure customers reach the right person and don’t have to repeat themselves. This approach balances the efficient self-service of an IVR with personalized agent support for a human touch.