Answering machines

Do this: set machine handling

1. Open the campaign, then the Settings tab.
2. Under Advanced, open Answering machines.
3. Switch Detect answering machines on or off. The help text says “Listen for a machine as soon as the call is picked up.”
4. If detection is on, under When a machine answers choose Hang up or Leave a voicemail.
5. Select Save changes.

The classic design calls the group Answering machines and voicemail and writes the choices as a sentence.

What happens when a machine answers

With detection on (the default):

1. VoDialer decides the call was answered by a machine, not a person.
2. The call is ended. A machine is never connected to a bot or an agent.
3. The result is “answering machine”.
4. The person is tried again after Wait after an answering machine, 8 hours by default. The try counts toward Most tries per person. See calling hours and retries.

A machine is not a person who answered. It is left out of the dropped-call counts, so it never raises your dropped-call rate. A machine first noticed after the bot heard its greeting is taken back out of the answered count the same way. See the dropped-call rule.

With detection off, a machine is treated like a person and the bot talks to it.

How a machine is detected

On the real phone system, VoDialer uses the media server’s tone detector. In the simulator, which is what runs today, detection works only because the fake AI’s transcript says the greeting sounded like a machine.

Not yet

Machine detection has not been verified end to end on a real phone system. The simulator relies on the fake AI’s transcript. FreeSWITCH’s detector was checked on its own in a container, but a full call through FreeSWITCH with real carriers was not. Treat detection rates as unknown until a real test run.

Voicemail

Leave a voicemail lets you write the message in What the voicemail says. The wording needs counsel’s review, and saving fails if you choose to leave a voicemail but write nothing.

Not yet

Nothing in VoDialer plays a voicemail yet. The choice and the wording are saved, but a machine is always hung up on, whichever option you choose.

Compare the two options:

Option	What you expect	What happens today
Hang up	The call ends.	The call ends.
Leave a voicemail	The message is played to the machine.	The call ends.

Tips

• Keep detection on unless you have a reason. A bot that talks to a machine uses AI minutes for nothing.
• A longer wait after a machine avoids calling the same voicemail box again and again.