“For questions about your invoice, press one …” – few parts of customer service are revised as rarely as the phone menu. It is set up once when the phone system goes live, extended with new options over time and then left untouched for years. Yet it is the first impression callers get of your service. In the 2025 Voice Study by MUUUH!, based on representative YouGov data for Germany, three quarters of respondents said that long and unsuitable voice menus on automated calls annoy them.
This article shows how to recognise a phone menu (IVR) that has drifted out of shape – and how to restructure it with manageable effort.
How to spot a phone menu that no longer works
The symptoms rarely show up as complaints; they show up in the data. A UserTesting survey of German bank customers, published in July 2025, describes typical patterns: 18 percent found the menu options confusing, 21 percent were not understood by the voice dialogue system, and 15 percent had already hung up in frustration. More than half always try to reach a human straight away.
In your own system, three figures are worth a look:
- Abandonment inside the menu: How many calls end before they even reach a queue?
- Wrong selections: How often is a call transferred to another team after it has been answered, because the chosen option did not match the request?
- The “zero” effect: How often do callers press any key or simply wait, just to get through somehow?
If one of these figures rises, the menu is usually no longer aligned with the actual reasons for calling, but with the organisation as it was a few years ago.
Structure: few options, shallow levels
A phone menu is heard, not read. Callers have to keep every option in mind until the right one comes along. Two basic rules have therefore proven useful: no more than four to five options per level, and ideally no more than two levels. Anyone who has to navigate three or four levels deep has already lost a minute by the time they reach the queue – before the actual waiting even begins.
The order follows frequency: the most common request belongs in position one. That order should be based not on assumptions but on an analysis of call reasons over the past few weeks. Options that are hardly used are removed or combined into a catch-all option such as “all other requests”.
Wording: speak from the customer’s point of view
Many menus mirror the internal department structure: “accounts receivable”, “back office”, “technical support level 2”. Callers, however, think in terms of their request, not in organisational charts. Phrases such as “questions about an invoice”, “track a delivery” or “a device is not working” work better.
Sentence structure matters just as much. “Press one for billing questions” forces callers to memorise the digit before they know whether the option fits at all. “For billing questions, press one” names the request first – anyone who recognises themselves in it hears the digit at exactly the right moment. Greeting and data protection notice should be brief; every second of announcement before the first option is a second in which the customer can do nothing.
Don’t hide the way to a human
According to a 2025 Bitkom survey of online shoppers in Germany, 62 percent want a person they can reach quickly in customer service. A menu that deliberately obscures this route causes frustration and wrong selections: callers then pick any option just to talk to someone – and end up with the wrong team.
A more honest and ultimately more efficient approach is a clearly named option such as “speak to a member of our team” – placed last if you like, but audible. A rule for callers who choose nothing at all also helps: after a defined time they are forwarded to a general team instead of being disconnected. Companies in Germany that use premium-rate service numbers should also note that, under the German Telecommunications Act, waiting time in the queue must be free of charge for callers.
Test, measure, adjust regularly
A phone menu is not a project with an end date. A fixed rhythm has proven itself, for example once a quarter:
- Check call reasons: Does the order of the options still match the actual distribution of requests?
- Call yourself: The team calls its own number and notes how long it takes to reach the queue and where people hesitate.
- Introduce changes one at a time: If you change wording, order and levels all at once, you won’t know afterwards what made the difference.
- Compare figures before and after: abandonment inside the menu, transfers after answering, average time to reach the queue.
In myContactCenter by ilogixx, menus, announcements and the queues behind them can be managed in one interface. Options and texts can be changed without touching the phone system itself, and the reports show where callers drop out or take a wrong turn.
Conclusion: the menu is part of the conversation
For callers, service does not begin when someone picks up, but with the first announcement. A phone menu with a few clear options, a sensible order and a visible route to a human shortens the time to the goal, reduces misrouted calls and takes pressure off the team. The effort involved is manageable – it just has to be made regularly.
Would you like to put your phone menu to the test? Book a consultation via the online calendar at ilogixx.de – together we will look at how callers currently move through your menu and where myContactCenter can help.
