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It is common that your phone agent will encounter voicemails. You can configure your agent to either hang up or leave a message when it detects a voicemail. The system internally run voicemail detection continuously (within the timeout), and if you select to hang up in voicemail, we will do that the moment we detect we are in voicemail. If you select to leave a message, the system will wait for its turn to speak to leave that message. If the voicemail detection timeout is reached, the system will stop the voicemail detection, and will continue with the call as normal.
1

Enable Voicemail Detection

Navigate to your agent settings -> call settings and enable “Voicemail Detection”
2

Choose Voicemail Behavior

Select one of two options:
  • Hang up: The agent will disconnect when it detects a voicemail
  • Leave a message: The agent will leave a message after it’s agent’s turn to speak. Dynamic variables are supported here for both static message and prompt.
    • Static message: The agent will leave a pre-recorded message, like Hi, this is {{your name}}, please give us a callback tomorrow at 10am.
    • Prompt: The agent will leave a message generated dynamically based on the instructions you provide, like summarize the call and ask user to call back

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FAQ

No, voicemail detection will only run for the first 3 minutes of the call. Please contact support@retellai.com if you need to extend this.
If the call is detected as voicemail and the action defined was taken successfully, the call will have a disconnection reason of voicemail_reached.
We’ve optimized voicemail detection latency for real time use case, so it should generally be under 100ms of latency impact.
Yes, the agent will hangup the call when the voicemail is detected, regardless of the whether the other side is talking or not.
No, the agent will only leave a message when it’s agent’s turn to speak.
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