IVR and announcements
IVR prompts and announcements in Indian languages
For Indian businesses the binding problem has always been languages. A phone menu that exists only in English and Hindi excludes most of the country, and recording the same tree in eight languages with eight artists — then re-recording all eight when a department changes — is why almost nobody does it.
Announcement audio has the same shape: campus and facility announcements, transit information, queue systems, holiday notices. All short, all repetitive, all changing often enough that studio recording is the wrong tool.
The workflow
- 1
Write the prompts as a script sheet, not a document
One row per prompt with an id, the language and the exact text. This is what makes regeneration cheap later — when a department name changes you regenerate three rows, not a tree.
- 2
Pick one voice and use it for every language
A single cloned voice across all languages makes the system feel like one organisation. Mixing preset voices per language is the tell that a phone system was assembled rather than designed.
- 3
Write numbers, times and amounts the way they should be spoken
The single biggest source of IVR errors. Write "two thousand five hundred rupees" rather than a numeral where the caller must hear it exactly, and generate one test prompt per number format before doing the whole set.
- 4
Check every prompt in isolation
IVR prompts are heard alone, out of context, usually on a poor line. A prompt that reads fine inside a paragraph can be ambiguous on its own, and this pass is what catches it.
- 5
Export WAV and convert to your telephony format
Output is WAV. Most telephony platforms want 8 kHz mono in a specific codec; script that conversion once so every future regeneration goes through the same path.
What goes wrong, and what to do about it
- Numbers, dates and amounts are read wrongly.
- Write them out as words for anything the caller must hear exactly — balances, reference numbers, timings. Digits are read correctly most of the time, and most of the time is not good enough on a phone menu.
- The prompts sound clipped or harsh on an actual call.
- Telephony bandwidth removes low frequencies and flattens dynamics. Generate IVR prompts slightly slower than you would for video, and audition them through a real phone call rather than on headphones.
- Each language sounds like a different company.
- Use one cloned voice across all of them rather than a different preset per language.
- A menu change means regenerating everything.
- The script sheet from step one. Prompts keyed by id regenerate individually; prompts stored as one long recording do not.
Which plan you actually need
IVR prompts are short, so this is a character-light use case. A hundred prompts averaging eight seconds is about thirteen minutes of audio — inside Starter's 60 minutes even after regenerating the whole set several times. Multiply by languages: the same tree in eight languages is under two hours, which is a Premium month.
Full limits are on the pricing page. Every plan includes the same 34 languages — plans differ on volume, voice slots and queue priority, not on capability.
Frequently asked questions
Can I use a generated voice for a commercial phone system?
Yes, on a paid plan. Clone a voice you are entitled to use, which for most businesses means a consenting employee or a voice artist engaged for the purpose with that use documented.
What audio format do I get?
WAV, which you convert to whatever your telephony platform requires. Scripting that conversion is worth doing once, since IVR prompts get regenerated more often than any other kind of audio.
How many Indian languages can an IVR tree cover?
Twelve Indian language options — Hindi, Hinglish, Bengali, Tamil, Telugu, Marathi, Gujarati, Kannada, Malayalam, Punjabi, Odia and Assamese — plus English and 21 other languages.
Other use cases
- AI voice for YouTube videosNarrate YouTube videos in your own cloned voice or a preset one, in Hindi, Hinglish or English. Consistent across episodes, and cheap enough to re-render a line you got wrong.
- AI voice for Reels, Shorts and short-form videoTurn a 30-second script into voiceover in seconds, in Hinglish or Hindi. Built for creators publishing daily, where recording every clip is the bottleneck.
- AI voice for podcastsGenerate podcast intros, ad reads, corrections and pickup lines in your own cloned voice, without booking studio time for thirty seconds of audio.
- AI voice for audiobooksNarrate books and long-form documents in a consistent voice, with sentence-boundary chunking that keeps chapter-length text from breaking mid-clause.
Try it for ivr and announcements
Start on the free tier with your own script. If it does not sound right, you have lost five minutes.