How Can a Voice Agent Leave a Voicemail When Nobody Answers?

Short answer: give the calling campaign a voicemail message. When a call is answered by a machine instead of a person, voicemail detection waits for the greeting and then leaves your message, spoken in the agent's language, instead of the agent trying to talk to a recording. The call is counted as a voicemail, not a conversation, and the person is retried later inside your calling hours. It works on numbers you buy from us and imported Plivo numbers — not on imported Twilio numbers.

Why it matters

On most outbound lists, many calls never reach a person. Without detection, an agent that "answers" a voicemail greeting talks to a machine, says nothing useful and runs up a call nobody heard. With detection, the call either ends cleanly or leaves a short message that tells the person who called and why — so the next attempt, or their call back, starts from somewhere.

How it works, step by step

1. Write the message on the campaign. In the calling campaign there is an optional "If it reaches voicemail" box. Writing a message is enough on its own — it turns detection on for that campaign.
2. The campaign dials as usual. Inside 9am–9pm IST, or a narrower window and the weekdays you set.
3. A machine answers. The carrier recognises the answering machine and waits for its greeting before your message plays.
4. Your message is left. It is spoken in the agent's language, so a Hindi-speaking agent's list hears the message in Hindi.
5. The call is recorded as a voicemail. It shows as "Answering machine" in the campaign's results, counted separately from answered calls.
6. The person is retried. A voicemail means the person was not reached, so smart retry rings them again after the wait you set for unanswered calls — still inside calling hours.

If you leave the message empty

With no message, what happens depends on the agent's "Hang up on voicemail" switch on its Voice settings. With it on, the call ends as soon as a machine picks up. With it off, nothing listens for a machine and the agent talks to the recording — so if your lists reach a lot of voicemail, turn one of the two on.

Writing a good voicemail

• Say who is calling and why, in one or two sentences: "Hello, this is Sharma Motors about your car's service. We'll try you again later, or call us back on this number."
• Keep personal details out. One message is left for everyone in the campaign, and a voicemail can be heard by anyone with the phone — no amounts owed, test results or account numbers.
• Make calling back worthwhile. If the same agent answers that number, a person who calls back is matched by phone number and can finish the conversation then.
• Write it to be heard twice. If a retry reaches the machine again, the message is left again — another reason to keep retries few.

Retries, and when not to call again

Smart retry treats outcomes differently: a busy line is retried within minutes, no answer and voicemail after an hour or more, and someone who declined the call or a number that does not exist is never re-dialled. Detection isn't perfect, which is one more reason the retry matters — a person wrongly taken for a machine gets another call. Anyone who asks not to be called goes on your do-not-contact list and is never called again.

Reading the results honestly

A carrier connects a voicemail the same way it connects a person, so a campaign that counted voicemails as answered would report an impressive connect rate that meant nothing. Here voicemails are their own number: they are left out of the connect rate and out of talk time, so both describe conversations with people.

What you need to start

A number bought in the console or an imported Plivo number, a calling campaign, and a two-sentence message. If a campaign dials from a mix of numbers and some cannot detect voicemail, you are told when you create it rather than after it has run. See voice campaigns for pacing, retries and outcomes, and Indian languages for the languages the agent speaks.