Our marketing director wants to play a mandatory 15-second promotional message at the start of our main inbound IVR flow. Currently, we use the standard ‘Play Audio’ block.
The issue is that frequent callers know our menu options. They press ‘1’ the second the call connects. Architect detects the DTMF, immediately cuts off the promotional audio, and jumps to the next menu. Marketing is furious. Is there a way to ‘Disable Barge-in’ specifically for that one promotional ‘Play Audio’ block so the caller is forced to listen to the entire 15 seconds before Architect will accept any DTMF input?
This is a common request, but the native ‘Play Audio’ block in Architect doesn’t have a simple ‘Disable Barge-in’ checkbox. DTMF buffering is handled at the Edge level, and by default, Architect immediately processes any buffered digits.
To force them to listen, you need to use a ‘Loop’ combined with a ‘Wait’ action, but that’s messy. The cleanest workaround is to put the promotional audio inside a ‘Call Data Action’ block (specifically, use the ‘Pre-call Audio’ feature if it’s a bot flow) or simply use an ‘Evaluate Schedule Group’ block right after the prompt. During the execution of those backend evaluation blocks, Architect ignores DTMF. But honestly, forcing callers to listen to ads usually tanks your CSAT scores faster than it drives sales!
If you are using a ‘Collect Input’ or ‘Menu’ block immediately after the ‘Play Audio’ block, Architect will buffer the DTMF pressed during the audio and apply it to the menu.
To clear the buffer, you can use a small Architect script trick: Insert a ‘Collect Input’ block right before the promotional audio with a timeout of 1 millisecond and max digits 1. This essentially ‘eats’ any early key presses. Then play your promotional audio. It won’t prevent them from pressing buttons during the ad, but it will prevent the ad from stopping and prevent those early buttons from navigating the menu.
Coming from the Genesys DX side, we used to do this all the time. In Genesys Cloud, if you absolutely must make it uninterruptible, the best method is to use the ‘Hold Music’ setting instead of a ‘Play Audio’ block.
Create a custom ‘In-Queue Flow’ that plays the promotional prompt as the hold music. When the caller enters the queue, they are forced to hear the hold music (the ad) for a set duration before the routing engine assigns them. DTMF does not barge-in on In-Queue flows unless you explicitly configure an ‘In-Queue Menu’. It ensures 100% listen rate, though as As noted above, your customers will hate it.