Dead air calls: why they happen and how to fix them

What causes dead air calls

1. AMD listening too long

While answering machine detection decides, the person hears nothing. Asterisk AMD settings often allow 3 to 5 seconds of analysis, and an AMD that is unsure (NOTSURE) can use all of it. By then many people have said "Hello?" twice and hung up.

2. AMD sending people to the voicemail path

When AMD wrongly decides a live person is a machine, VICIdial hangs up or plays your voicemail message to them. To the person, that is a silent call that ends, or a recording that makes no sense.

3. No agent available

A predictive dialer places more calls than it has free agents. When too many are answered at once, some wait in the queue in silence, or are dropped. That is the dialer's dial ratio, not AMD, but faster AMD shortens every wait.

4. Carrier and network delay

A slow answer signal or one-way audio on the trunk adds silence before AMD even starts.

Ghost calls

A ghost call is an outbound call where the person answers and nobody is there: the dialer dropped it, AMD hung up on them, or the call reached a queue with no agent. People call these "phantom calls" too. Each one teaches the person that your number is spam.

What dead air costs

• Lost conversations. People hang up during the silence; that lead may never answer again.
• Spam labels. Carriers' call analytics and apps that label calls take hang-ups and complaints into account. Numbers that make many short silent calls are more likely to be marked "Spam Likely".
• Compliance risk. Rules such as the US Telemarketing Sales Rule limit abandoned calls (a call not connected to a live agent within 2 seconds of the person's greeting) to 3% per campaign over 30 days. The UK has similar rules for silent and abandoned calls. Check the rules that apply to you with your own counsel.

How to fix dead air calls

1. Decide faster

   nomoVM answers in about 2 seconds for most calls, and only listens up to 3.2 seconds when the call is unclear. There is no long NOTSURE wait.

2. Stop hanging up on people

   Better AMD sends 94.9% of live people to agents in our measured test, so fewer of them hear a hang-up or a voicemail message.

3. Drop machines early

   Every voicemail caught by AMD is an agent who is free for the next live answer, which shortens queue waits.

4. Tune the dial ratio

   Watch your drop rate in VICIdial's reports and lower the dial level or set a drop rate limit if calls are waiting for agents.

5. Check your trunks

   Look for slow answer supervision and one-way audio on the carrier side.

Want the numbers for your center? The AMD ROI calculator estimates how many live conversations your current AMD loses each month.