IVRs (interactive voice response) are automated phone systems that can facilitate communication between callers and businesses. If you've ever dialed your credit card company to check on a balance after responding to a series of automated prompts, you've used an IVR. Learn how to build an IVR in minutes using Twilio's powerful TwiML API.
Start TutorialAbout this application
This Laravel sample application is modeled after a typical call center experience, but with more Reese's Pieces.
Stranded aliens can call a phone number and receive instructions on how to get out of earth safely or, call their home planet directly. In this tutorial, we'll show you the key bits of code to make this work.
To run this sample app yourself, download the code and follow the instructions on GitHub.
Let's get started! Click the right arrow above to move to the next step of the tutorial.
See Also:
Answering a Phone Call
To initiate the phone tree, we need to configure one of our Twilio numbers to send our web application an HTTP request when we get an incoming call.
Click on one of your numbers and
configure the Voice URL to point to our app. In our code the route
will be /ivr/welcome.
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Responding to the Twilio request with TwiML
Our Twilio number is now configured to send HTTP requests to this controller action on any incoming voice calls. Our app responds with TwiML to tell Twilio what to do in response to the message.
In this case we tell Twilio to
Gather the input from
the caller and we Play a
welcome message.
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Where to send the caller's input
The gather's action parameter takes an absolute or relative URL as a
value — in our case, the menu-response route.
When the caller has finished entering digits Twilio will make a
GET or POST request to this URL including a
Digits parameter with the number our caller chose.
After making this request, Twilio will continue the current call using
the TwiML received in your response. Any TwiML verbs occuring after a
<Gather> are unreachable, unless the caller enters no digits.
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The Main Menu: Processing the caller's selection
This route handles processing the caller's input.
If our caller chooses '1' for directions, we use a helper method defined
below, _getReturnInstructions, to respond with TwiML that will
Say directions to our
caller's extraction point.
If the caller chooses '2' to call their home planet, then we need to gather more input from him/her. We'll cover this in the next step.
If the caller enters anything else we respond with a TwiML
Redirect to the main
menu.
See Also:
The Planet's Directory: Collect more input from the caller
If our caller chooses to call her home planet we will tell her the planet directory. This is similar to a typical "company directory" feature of most IVRs.
In our TwiML response we use a Gather verb again to receive our caller's
input. The action verb points to the planets route this time, this
will switch our response based on what the caller chooses.
Let's look at that route next.
The Planet's Directory: Connect the caller to another number
In this controller, we grab the caller's selection of the request and store
it in a variable called $selectedOption. We then use a
Dial verb with
the appropriate phone number to connect our caller to her home
planet.
The current numbers are hardcoded, but they could also be read from a database or from a file.
Where to next?
That's it! We've just implemented an IVR phone tree that will delight and serve your customers.
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Did this help?
Thanks for checking this tutorial out! If you have any feedback to share with us, we'd love to hear it. Contact the Twilio Developer Education Team to let us know what you think.