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Athena includes phone-menu navigation for outbound voice agents that call businesses. The agent can listen to an automated menu, press the keypad option that matches its goal, follow subsequent menus, and speak when a person or department answers. Hold handling lets it wait through music, tones, and recorded messages without repeatedly checking in. Use these capabilities with an Athena Voice agent on the supported LiveKit SIP phone-call path. Keypad navigation applies to phone calls; a browser conversation cannot send keys to a telephone menu.

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Included behavior and defaults

Under Agent → Settings → Phone Menus and Hold: Both settings default to on when an agent has not explicitly disabled them. Platform configuration can affect availability. Required tool setup: Athena provides Press Phone Keys as a built-in tool type. Create the tool and attach it to the workflow nodes that need to navigate menus. The default-on settings do not automatically attach the tool to every agent.

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Set up an agent

1

Prepare the phone route

Choose an Athena Voice model configuration and a supported LiveKit SIP telephony configuration. Complete the telephony setup before testing menu navigation.
2

Add Press Phone Keys

Open Tools, create a Press Phone Keys tool, and save it. Attach it to the relevant conversation nodes in your workflow, including the step that will encounter the menu. You can use the supplied description as the starting point.
3

Review the behavior settings

Open the agent’s Settings → Phone Menus and Hold. Keep Phone Menus (Keypad) and Wait Quietly on Hold enabled for calls that may encounter menus or queues.
4

Give the agent a destination and goal

Describe who it should reach and what it should do there. For example: “Reach the appointments department to ask about available appointment times. Choose English if a language menu asks.” Let the agent use the options announced on the current call rather than assuming every business uses the same key sequence.
5

Test, review, and publish

Use a controlled destination, review the run’s menu and keypad activity, and confirm that the agent reached the intended department and resumed speaking appropriately. Publish the intended workflow version before using its settings in published calls. Draft phone tests can still place real calls.

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What happens during a call

For a call whose goal is to reach appointments: The built-in keypad tool accepts 0–9, *, and #, with up to 16 keys per action. Its supplied instructions tell the agent to use the menu’s announced choices and avoid passwords, PINs, card numbers, and one-time codes.

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Review navigation results

Review the call activity and run logs for menu decisions, keypad sends, and the conversation after pickup. A key-send event alone does not establish that the intended department answered. Check the transcript, available audio, and final task outcome together. If navigation does not proceed, check:
  • Tool attachment: the active workflow step must have access to Press Phone Keys.
  • Call path: keypad sending requires the supported LiveKit SIP phone-call runtime.
  • Settings and version: the version used for the call must contain the intended menu/hold settings and tool assignments.
  • Routing goal: make the desired department and any language preference clear in the agent’s instructions.
Phone-menu navigation runs during a call. Retry Review separately decides whether a failed call is eligible for another attempt; unusual menu failures may be held for review instead of redialled automatically. See Tools and knowledge, Agents, drafts, and publishing, and Calls, runs, and results for the surrounding workflow.