How to Set Up an Auto Attendant for a Small Business

A small-business auto attendant is a spoken greeting that offers a short menu and sends the caller somewhere useful. It is not a live front desk. It is not a voicemail box that swallows every ring. It is not a paid answering service that takes messages for a per-minute fee. On XI the spoken menu is the virtual receptionist. This guide is the setup worksheet: what to say, how few options to keep, and what happens when nobody presses a key.

The site already has a virtual receptionist vs answering service comparison and an IVR design piece aimed at larger contact-center trees. This page is for a US shop that wants one published number, a 15-second greeting, and three destinations. List prices stay on the pricing cards: Starter $17, Business $20, and Business Plus $23 per user / 30 days. Virtual receptionist is listed on Scale. Talk to sales if you need the menu on another plan.

Decide what the greeting is for

Write the job in one sentence before you record anything. “Send new jobs to the estimator, existing customers to the shop, and after-hours callers to a message.” If you cannot say that in one line, the menu will wander. A spoken tree cannot fix a shop that has no one assigned to pick up. Routing still needs seats, hours, and a no-answer path.

XI call routing can send callers by team, schedule, sequential ring, or simultaneous ring without a menu. Use a greeting first when the same number serves two or three obvious buckets — sales vs service, front desk vs billing, or “press 1 if this is an emergency.” Do not build a campus directory for a four-person office.

If the only goal is covering nights, start with after-hours phone answering and time-of-day routing. A menu is optional after sunset. Many shops play hours, take a voicemail, and return the call in the morning. Business includes voicemail with transcripts at $20/user/30 days. See voicemail for that path.

Write a short menu on paper

Keep the first layer to three or four keys plus a default. A typical shop menu is: 1 new service, 2 existing customers, 3 office or billing, and 0 for a person. Anything past that belongs on a second layer only if you truly have a second team. Callers who are driving will not wait through a paragraph.

Script the greeting in the order people hear it: who they reached, the hours if they change, the keys, then what happens if they wait. Example: “You have reached Riverside Service. For a new job press 1. For an existing ticket press 2. For the office press 3. Stay on the line for the next available person.” Do not read the street address, the website, or a holiday list unless that is the only reason the line is open.

Name destinations that exist. If “press 2 for existing customers” rings the same phone as press 1, skip the split. If nobody staffs billing, send that key to voicemail instead of a silent ring. Put the map next to the greeting: key, destination, busy hop, no-answer hop. Change the map in software when someone is out — do not rerecord the whole greeting for a sick day.

Hours, overflow, and the no-key path

An auto attendant without hours is a daytime greeting that plays at 2 a.m. Set business hours first. Time-of-day routing can play a night greeting, take a message, or ring an on-call seat. The call forwarding page and the forwarding guide cover busy and no-answer hops when a seat is already on a call.

Decide what happens when the caller presses nothing. Common defaults: ring the front-desk seat, then voicemail; or play the menu once more and disconnect. Do not loop the greeting forever. Do not dump every silent caller into a mailbox nobody checks. Business adds recordings and transcripts so the overflow is readable. Starter at $17/user/30 days still gives you calling, one DID, and unlimited US/CA calls if you only need ring groups.

Emergency keys only help if someone actually answers them. If “press 9 for after-hours service” rings a personal cell that is on silent, you have not built coverage. Sequential ring can try the shop tablet, then the on-call owner. Simultaneous ring can light two seats during a storm. Document who is on-call before you publish that key on the greeting.

How this maps onto XI

XI is a virtual phone system. The DID lives on the account. Calling rings the apps and the browser. The spoken menu is the virtual receptionist. Shared appearance of one line across many people is shared numbers, listed on Scale. Extra DIDs start at $1 if you want a second published line for a second city.

SMS does not go through the keypad tree. A homeowner who texts the same number they called still needs two-way messaging and A2P 10DLC registration for application-to-person texts. Inbound SMS is $5/30 days on the pricing page. Only text people who agreed to receive texts. The business texting guide is the same-number walkthrough.

Notes belong next to the call. XI CRM is contacts, notes, and history — enough to write “pressed 1, wants Saturday install” without a second database. If you already live in HubSpot, Slack, Jobber, or Zapier, those connectors are listed on the site. See the FAQ for the published list. This guide does not invent a menu analytics suite XI does not sell.

If you are comparing a personal-style number that cannot greet callers, XI vs Google Voice is the compare page. For a larger UCaaS menu builder, XI vs RingCentral is the other. This site does not invent feature-parity scores for either path.

Record, test, then publish

Record the greeting in a quiet room. Say the business name clearly. Pause after each key. Listen on a phone speaker, not only on a headset. Call the number from a line that is not on the account. Press every key. Wait through the no-key path. Call after hours. Confirm the night greeting is the night greeting.

Change Google, the website, and printed cards only after the live test works. If you are moving the number onto XI first, port the existing DID and keep the old carrier forwarding until the port completes. The number-porting guide and switch-provider guide cover that sequence. Do not rerecord magnets because the menu exists — the public number stays the same.

Review the greeting when hours change, when a person leaves, or when a new team exists. A stale “press 2 for Maria” after Maria left is worse than no menu. Keep the paper map with the account so the next person can edit routing without guessing.

Mistakes that make a menu worse than no menu

The usual failure is too many keys. A ten-option first layer is a campus PBX copied onto a four-person shop. Callers hang up. Cut until each key has a different human or a different mailbox. If two keys ring the same phone, merge them.

The second failure is a greeting that changes every week. Hours belong in routing, not in a paragraph you rerecord on Monday. Name the business, offer the keys, stop talking. Holiday closures can be a short night greeting. Do not read a weather speech.

The third failure is an emergency key nobody staffs. If you publish “press 9 after hours,” someone has to pick up or the caller should hear an honest mailbox. Sequential ring can try the shop, then the on-call owner. Document the on-call person the same week you record the key. A dead emergency option is worse than voicemail.

Pricing and what is not on the three cards

Starter is $17 per user / 30 days: calling, one DID, unlimited US/CA calls, mobile plus desktop apps, and standard support. Business is $20 per user / 30 days and adds recordings, voicemail transcripts, voicemail, a personalized greeting, and 24/7 support. Business Plus is $23 per user / 30 days for higher threshold limits. Scale is custom.

Virtual receptionist, shared numbers, and API access are listed on Scale and as not included on the three public cards. Extra DIDs start at $1. There is no second “auto attendant edition” price. If you only need ring groups and voicemail, you may not need the spoken tree at all. Compare the cards to your current bill. Count people who answer the phone.

For product language on the same pieces, see features, small-business solutions, and the compare index. Call +1 (833) 776-0111 if you want the worksheet walked through on a live account.