Managed Voice / Auto Attendant (IVR)

Business Hours vs. After-Hours Call Menus

Your automated call menu (an auto attendant — the “press 1 for Sales” system that greets callers) see Glossary: Auto Attendant can automatically switch between an “open” greeting and a “closed” greeting based on a schedule you set once, with no one needing to flip a switch every evening.

How does the system know when we’re open or closed?

You set a weekly schedule — for example, Monday to Friday, 9am to 5pm — directly in the admin portal. The moment the clock passes your closing time, callers automatically hear your after-hours greeting instead of your normal menu. No manual toggling, and nothing to forget on a Friday afternoon.

What can an after-hours menu do differently than the daytime menu?

An after-hours menu can do anything a daytime menu can, but tuned for when no one’s around to answer live: play a message with your hours and website, route straight to a general voicemail box, forward to an on-call or emergency line, or offer callers the option to leave a voicemail that gets emailed to the right department immediately. See Voicemail for what happens to messages left after hours.

Can we have more than just two states — open and closed?

Yes. Beyond a simple open/closed split, you can layer in holiday schedules and one-off exceptions (a snow day, an early closure, a company retreat) that override the normal weekly schedule without you having to edit it. See Holiday & Exception Schedules.

Does this work differently for different departments or phone numbers?

Each phone number or menu can have its own independent hours — so, for example, your Sales line and Support line can run on different schedules if they’re staffed differently. This uses the same underlying scheduling engine as Conditional / Time-of-Day Routing, which also lets you route based on the day of the week or time of day beyond just a simple open/closed toggle.

Can I preview or test what a caller hears without waiting until after hours?

Yes — the admin portal lets you preview and test any menu on demand, so you can confirm the after-hours greeting sounds right before you rely on it.