Not only do we need extensions for humans but we need a better way to hand off calls to Voice AI agents. Having to buy a phone number for them which then makes them publicly accessible is not great. Many Voice AI agents we make are intended to be internal use or put behind IVRs.

The IVR workaround gets messy fast when you have more than a few team members. We've built it for clients but honestly it's not sustainable for most businesses that need real extension functionality.

Same question here.

Seems like a strangely easy feature to implement. It makes it difficult to keep track of clients and vendors specific contact info if there's no dedicated place to keep track of their extension. Simply strengthen the phone field to support extensions with a comma, like Jim Jachetta mentioned in January this year.

I've spent extensive amounts of time setting up the IVR's. (You can actually set up more than 9 extensions, the if function just has to be layered.) But it's incredibly inflexible, and hard to use.

My clients have reported issues in doing transfers from user to user. It can ONLY ring at either the app or web, not both. Sometimes the transfer doesn't go through.

it's hard to set up the rules, so sometimes a user will simply get a hung up line.

The analytics aren't good enough to see when calls get dropped, where users stop in the phone tree etc.

So, while I LOVE the contact focused approach, and the 'fake' IVR on top...

To truly replace the phone system for my clients, we're going to need a much 'true-er' more native IVR, where you can create multiple extensions, users, some type of easier search functionality (enter in the first 3 letters of the person you are trying to reach).

On the reporting side, it will have to mirror a more regular company like 8x8, aircall etc.

I also would like to see a more native integration of this. I just worked through setting up within the IVR a Press 201 For John, Press 202 For Steve, etc... because our recorded IVR greeting tells the caller - "if you know you're parties extension, please dial it now.". It would be great to assign extensions to users when they are created within GHL so we could just pick a person from a datapoint or even better, offer a dial by name directory.

Is there any activity on phone extensions? Some systems have a separate field; others use commas to indicate an extension. Also dialers accept Commas as a pause which help if autodialing phone numbers with extensions. Suggested syntax +12125551212,101

i think you could probably set this up through the IVR. I haven't done it yet but was just thinking about trying it out.

Basically, instead of setting it up for "press 1 to reach Tom, press 2 to reach Bob, etc", have 1 option when they call that says, "if you know your party's extension, enter it now."

Make sure the "STOP GATHERING AFTER (DIGITS)" in the advanced settings of the "Gather Input on Call (IVR)" action is set to the length of your extensions and then set up what ever extensions you want for each person in the Condition tree.

I do like the idea of making it native so we don't have to go through all of this to have extensions though.

same question ?