In this chapter, you will learn the following recipes:
- Setting up IVRs
- Screening and recording calls
- Logging and reporting calls
- Looking up HighriseHQ contacts on incoming calls
- Getting directions
- Leaving a message
- Sending an SMS to your Salesforce.com contacts
IVRs, Interactive Voice Response systems, are automated phone systems that can facilitate communication between callers and businesses. If you have ever been able to get through to your bank to check balance after responding to a series of automated prompts, you have used an IVR.
Businesses use IVR systems for a number of purposes, such as:
- Answering a call and prompting menu options for the caller to choose
- Directing the call to an agent, such as sales or support
- Acting as a voicemail or an answering machine
Taking it a step further, IVR systems are heavily in use for services such as:
- Mobile: Pay-as-you-go account funding; registration; and mobile purchases such as ringtones and logos
- Banking: balance, payments, transfers, transaction history, and so on
- Retail and Entertainment: orders, bookings, credit and debit card payments
- Utilities: meter readings
- Travel: ticket booking, flight information, checking in, and so on
- Weather forecasts: water, road, and ice conditions
Using PHP and the Twilio API, you can easily create a powerful IVR for your business.
In this chapter, we will set up a basic IVR system, perform call screening and recording, log and report the calls, and also check our incoming calls to see whether they exist in our Highrise CRM account.
We'll also show you how to add extra options on to your IVR menu by adding the ability to get directions to the office.
Finally, we will set up a system to get a list of contacts from our www.Salesforce.com account and send an SMS to them.