Interactive Voice Response (IVR) is an automated phone technology that enables callers to access information and troubleshoot basic issues through a set of pre-recorded menu options without interacting with a live agent.

IVR technology began in the 1970s with basic phone systems using touch-tone keypad input. Over the decades, advancements in computing and telephony have led to more sophisticated systems, with IVR now capable of initiating and holding natural conversations through customer service NLP and speech analytics.