When an outbound call is answered, answering-machine detection (AMD) listens to the first moments of audio and classifies the call as a person or a machine. A person tends to say a short greeting and then pause; a voicemail greeting is usually longer and continuous, and often ends with a beep.
AMD matters most for predictive dialing, where the dialer places more calls than there are free agents. Without it, agents spend a large part of their day listening to voicemail greetings.
Trade-offs to know:
- Detection delay: classification takes a moment, so the person who answered may hear a short silence before an agent comes on.
- False positives: a real person classified as a machine is hung up on. That is a lost contact and, if it happens often, a poor experience for the people called.
- False negatives: a machine passed to an agent costs a few seconds of agent time but does not affect the person called.
In OVOKY, answering-machine detection is on by default for predictive campaigns. Calls classified as machines are hung up and the attempt is logged on the contact, so it can be retried later.