IVR Voice Generator: Phone Menus and Voicemail Greetings Fish Audio

A phone menu is the most unforgiving script a business writes. The caller cannot rewind, cannot read a caption and is usually already annoyed. Every prompt has to do one job in a few seconds: welcome, route, explain, or apologise. That is exactly the kind of short, repeated, consistency-heavy work a generated voice handles well.

This guide covers the prompt set an IVR actually needs, how to write for the telephone, and what a full menu costs.

The prompt set behind a working phone menu

Most small-business phone systems need the same eight to twelve prompts:

• Welcome — who answered and what happens next.
• Menu — the options, in the order callers expect them.
• Department prompts — sales, support, billing, opening hours.
• Hold message — what is happening and how long it may take.
• After-hours greeting — when you are closed and when you reopen.
• Voicemail greeting — what to leave and what happens after.
• Unavailable and overflow prompts — busy, closed, redirecting.

Write them as separate lines in one project. One voice across the set is what makes the system sound like a business rather than a collection of clips.

How to write prompts that survive a phone speaker

• One idea per sentence. "Press one for sales. Press two for support." reads better than a comma-heavy list.
• Say numbers the way they should be spoken. Write "one eight hundred" instead of "1800", and read account numbers digit by digit.
• Put the action first. "Press one for sales" beats "For sales, please press one" when the caller is listening for the key.
• Keep the greeting short. A welcome longer than about eight seconds delays every call.
• Name the escape hatch. "Stay on the line to speak to a person" is a prompt, not an afterthought.

The three-step workflow

1. Write the whole prompt set before generating anything. Read it aloud once; anything you stumble on will stumble in the recording.
2. Choose one voice and keep it. A calm, mid-paced voice with clear consonants survives phone compression. Audition on the menu line, not on a sample sentence.
3. Generate, proof-listen, export. Check the greeting, the extension list and the voicemail greeting first, then export the set and convert copies to the format your PBX expects.

When the menu changes, edit the affected lines and regenerate them in the same project. The saved voice keeps the new prompt matching the old ones.

What does an IVR voice set cost?

Prompts are short, so the cost is dominated by the number of lines rather than their length:

A complete phone system sits inside the $9 Starter pack, but a business line needs commercial usage rights, which start with the $29 Creator pack; the commercial use guide covers the details. If the prompts are generated by your own application rather than by hand, the API guide explains keys and credits, and the voice agent guide covers the conversational side of the same stack.

Frequently asked questions

Can I generate a complete phone menu with one voice?

Yes. Write every prompt as a separate line, keep the same voice across the set, and generate the lines together. A menu, hold message, after-hours greeting and voicemail greeting then sound like one receptionist rather than four recordings.

How do I make numbers and names sound right?

Write numbers the way you want them spoken — "one eight hundred" rather than "1800" — and spell unusual names phonetically in the script. Proof-listen the greeting and the extension list before publishing; those are the two prompts callers hear most.

What happens when the menu changes?

Regenerate only the prompts that changed, with the same saved voice. A new extension or a seasonal greeting costs a few credits, not a studio session, and the rest of the menu stays untouched.

Do I need commercial rights for a business phone system?

Yes. A phone menu is business use, so it needs the commercial usage rights that start with the $29 Creator pack. The commercial use guide explains what the rights cover.

What file format should I use for a phone system?

Export the audio and convert it to the format your PBX expects — commonly 8 kHz mono WAV or a compressed format such as MP3. Keep the original generation as the master, and convert a copy for the phone system.

Related

• AI voice commercial use - what the business rights cover at each pack.
• Fish Audio API - generating prompts from your own phone application.
• AI voice agent - the conversational side of the same stack.