Route calls abandoned in the IVR

Some callers never get to talk to anyone. They dial in, sit through the IVR menu or a closed-message, and hang up before the call is ever routed to a queue. Left alone, these show up as calls with no agent, no reply, and nothing useful to say about what the caller wanted.

This recipe builds an automation that catches those calls the moment they close, and routes them to a dedicated team so someone can review, tag, or follow up — instead of letting them disappear into the inbox unnoticed.

What you’ll use

• Trigger: Call Abandoned in IVR — a Voice trigger that fires when a call closes after the caller hung up in the IVR/closed-message before ever reaching a queue.
• Condition: Reached a queue — a Yes/No condition you can add to any rule to filter on whether a call was routed to an agent queue. Read “How ‘Reached a queue’ works” below before reusing it: what it measures depends on the trigger it sits under.

You don’t strictly need the condition on a rule built from the Call Abandoned in IVR trigger — the trigger itself only fires for calls that never reached a queue.

Before you start

• Admin permissions to edit automation rules
• A team set up to receive IVR-abandoned calls (for example, an “IVR” team) — see your Teams settings if you need to create one
• A read of What are Automations? if you’re new to the rule builder

Steps

1. Open the rules page. Go to Settings → Automation Rules. It opens on the Rules tab.

2. Start a new rule. Click New Rule, then choose the Manual Builder card on the screen that opens.

3. Pick the trigger. Choose Call Abandoned in IVR from the trigger list (it’s grouped under Voice triggers). This fires once per call, right after the call closes, for any caller who hung up in the IVR or closed-message without being routed to a queue.

4. (Optional) Add the “Reached a queue” condition. If you want to reuse this same rule for broader voice logic, add a condition:

   
   Field: Reached a queue
   Operator: equals
   Value: No

For a rule built purely on the Call Abandoned in IVR trigger this is redundant — the trigger already guarantees the call never reached a queue — but it’s the condition to reach for whenever you need to branch on queue-routing outcome in other rules.

5. Add a branch. Leave the default Always branch in place — every call that fires this trigger is one you want to act on.

6. Add actions. Inside the branch, add the actions you want, for example:

   
   Assign Conversation to Agent/Team → choose your IVR team, so someone reviews the drop-off.
   Add tag → apply a tag like ivr-abandoned for reporting.

7. Name and save. Give the rule a name like “Route: IVR-abandoned calls” and click Create Rule.

8. Enable it. Toggle the rule On.

How “Reached a queue” works

On the Call Abandoned in IVR trigger, Reached a queue reflects the current call — not whether some earlier call on the same conversation reached one. A caller who calls back and reopens an existing conversation, then abandons again in the IVR, still evaluates as “No” for the new call, so the rule won’t miss repeat abandons just because the conversation has history.

On any other trigger it means something else. With no per-call annotation to read, the condition falls back to the conversation’s own call-shape columns, which persist across a reused conversation — so it answers “has this conversation ever reached a queue?”. A conversation whose earlier call was answered evaluates as “Yes” there, even while its newest call was abandoned in the IVR. Reuse the condition with that in mind.

This also means the condition covers a deliberately broad population by design: callers who hang up on a closed-message outside business hours, and callers who exit partway through an AI voice agent flow, both count as never having reached a queue, alongside classic “hung up in the menu” abandons.

Verify it worked

Place (or simulate) a test call that enters your IVR and hangs up before selecting a queue-routing option. Within a few seconds the call’s conversation should pick up the assignment and tag from your rule. Check the Run History tab on the rules page and find the rule by name in the Rule column — that tab filters by status and date only. (Manual Executions is a different thing: it lists simulations you start yourself on manual-trigger rules, and an IVR-abandoned run never appears there.)

Troubleshooting

• Symptom: The rule doesn’t fire at all. Fix: Confirm the rule is enabled and that the trigger is Call Abandoned in IVR, not a general call-ended trigger — this trigger only fires for calls that closed without reaching a queue.

• Symptom: A repeat caller who abandoned in the IVR again didn’t get routed. Fix: This shouldn’t happen — on this trigger Reached a queue is evaluated per call, not per conversation history. Rules don’t compete: there is no priority ordering, and every enabled rule on the trigger is evaluated, so another rule matching cannot suppress this one. Check Run History for the run and its actions.

• Symptom: You added a Reached a queue condition but saving the rule is blocked. Fix: The condition requires a value (Yes or No) to be selected — the builder won’t let you save it empty.

See also

• What are Automations?
• Create your first automation
• Triggers reference
• Conditions reference