voice api inbound calls ivr

If you mean building an inbound IVR with a voice API, the basic flow is:

1. Receive an inbound call on a phone number
2. Answer the call
3. Play a greeting
4. Collect user input with keypad (DTMF) or speech
5. Route the call based on the input
6. Transfer to an agent / queue / voicemail / bot if needed

Typical IVR flow example

• “Press 1 for sales”
• “Press 2 for support”
• “Press 3 to hear office hours”
• “Press 0 to speak to an operator”

Core pieces you need

• Voice API provider: Twilio, Vonage, Plivo, Telnyx, etc.
• A purchased phone number
• Webhook endpoint your app exposes
• IVR logic that returns call instructions

Example with Twilio-style flow

Your webhook might return something like:

<Response>
  <Gather numDigits="1" action="/handle-keypress" method="POST">
    <Say>Welcome to Acme. Press 1 for sales, 2 for support.</Say>
  </Gather>
  <Say>No input received. Goodbye.</Say>
</Response>

Then /handle-keypress checks the digit and responds accordingly:

• 1 → sales queue
• 2 → support queue
• anything else → repeat menu

Common IVR features

• Multi-level menus
• Call routing by business hours
• Voicemail fallback
• Queue/hold music
• Speech recognition
• Call recording
• Agent transfer

Best practices

• Keep menus short
• Offer “press 0 for operator”
• Let callers repeat the menu
• Handle invalid/no input gracefully
• Support both keypad and speech if possible

If you want, I can give you:

1. a Twilio IVR example in Node.js/Python
2. a call flow diagram
3. a full inbound IVR implementation for a specific provider