Voicemail detection
Recognize an answering machine on outbound calls, leave your message once, and end the call instead of pitching to a recording.
Many outbound calls are answered by a machine, not a person. Without detection, your agent gives its whole opening to the voicemail greeting, waits for replies that never come, and the call runs until the mailbox cuts it off. The minutes are spent and nobody hears the pitch.
With voicemail detection on, the agent recognizes the greeting, stops talking, leaves the message you wrote, and hangs up.
What it changes
Take a call that reaches a mailbox. The greeting plays first either way. Without detection, the agent then talks to the recording until the mailbox cuts it off, about 46 seconds in this example. With detection, your message is left and the call ends at about 13 seconds. That is about 70% less time on every voicemail.
| Without detection | With detection | |
|---|---|---|
| What the agent says | Its full opening, to a recording | Nothing more once the greeting is recognized, then your voicemail message |
| How the call ends | When the mailbox or the idle timeout cuts it off | Right after your message. With no message set, at once and in silence |
| Call logs | Looks like an answered call with a one-sided transcript | Marked Voicemail, so it is easy to filter and count |
| Campaigns | Counted as completed, so it is not retried | Can be retried later with auto-retry |
How it decides
The agent listens to what the other end says in the first moments of the call and decides whether it is a live person or a recorded greeting.
| Sounds like voicemail | Sounds like a live person |
|---|---|
| "Please leave a message after the tone" | "Hello?" |
| "You've reached Sarah. I'm not available right now" | "Who is this?" |
| "Your call has been forwarded to voicemail" | "I'm busy, can you call me later?" |
| "The mailbox is full" or "The number you have dialed" | A short answer such as "Yes", "Haan", or a name |
| A scripted one-way message with no pause for a reply | A question or request aimed at the caller |
It works in any language the agent transcribes. A greeting in Hindi or Spanish that says the person is unavailable and asks for a message counts as voicemail.
When in doubt, it treats the call as a live person. Hanging up on a real customer is worse than missing one voicemail, so a borderline greeting keeps the conversation going.
These are not treated as voicemail:
- A recording notice on a live line, such as "This call may be recorded for quality and training". It counts as voicemail only if the same greeting also asks for a message.
- A call screener that asks for your name so it can connect you. See Call screening detection.
What happens when it detects voicemail
The agent stops talking
Anything it was saying is cut off at once.
It waits for the greeting to finish
The agent waits until the greeting has been quiet for about 2 seconds, so your message does not talk over it.
It leaves your message
Your voicemail message is spoken in the agent's own voice. If you left the message empty, the agent hangs up without a word, and the person never learns who called. See Writing the voicemail message.
The call ends
The call ends as soon as the message finishes. It is logged as Voicemail.
Turning it on
- Open the agent and go to Voicemail Handling.
- Turn on Enable Voicemail Detection.
- Write a Voicemail Message. The field is optional, but an empty one means a silent hang-up (see below).
- Save the agent.
It applies per agent, from the next outbound call.
Writing the voicemail message
The message is the only thing the person will hear from you, so make it count:
Hi Priya, this is Maya from Rivertown Dental about your appointment on Friday. Please call us back at 555 0123. Thanks!
- Say who you are and why you called in the first sentence.
- Give one clear next step: a number to call back, or when you will try again.
- Keep it to two or three sentences. The call ends as soon as it finishes.
- Personalize it with variables. Write
{{name}}where the name goes. It and any other variables you pass with the call are filled in for each contact, the same as in the welcome message.
Where it works
| Call | Detection runs |
|---|---|
| Outbound phone calls | Yes |
| Inbound phone calls | No. Someone called you, so a machine is not expected. |
| Web calls | No |
| A call that is being transferred | No. Once a transfer starts, a voicemail verdict is ignored. |
Afterwards
Call logs. Each detected call shows a Voicemail badge. Filter by the Voicemail status in Call logs to see them all, with the greeting in the transcript.
Analytics. Voicemail is counted as its own outcome. It is part of your connect rate (calls completed plus voicemail), separate from no-answer and busy.
Campaigns. In a bulk call campaign, lines that reached voicemail can be retried. With auto-retry on, they are called again up to your retry limit. You can also include them when you retry failed lines by hand.
Post-call actions and webhooks. By default they run on both completed and voicemail calls, so your CRM still hears about a voicemail. See Post-call actions.
Over the API
Turn detection on when you create or update an agent:
{
"voicemail": {
"enabled": true,
"message": "Hi {{name}}, this is Maya from Rivertown Dental. Please call us back at 555 0123."
}
}The agent you get back shows the same settings as voicemail_enabled and
voicemail_message.
Each call log tells you what happened:
| Field | Value on a detected voicemail |
|---|---|
is_voicemail | true |
hangup_source | voicemail |
hangup_reason | Voicemail detected |
Good to know
- One decision per call. Once the agent decides a call is a live person, it does not switch to voicemail later in the same call.
- It listens to words. A mailbox that plays only a beep, with no spoken greeting, gives it nothing to recognize, and the agent carries on as normal.
- It works alongside call screening. If a phone's screener sends your call to voicemail, your voicemail message is left there too.