How to read the VERM Unanswered report

The VERM Unanswered report is the mirror image of the Answered report. Instead of the calls that reached a live person, it gathers every call within your report window that was never picked up by an agent, then slices those calls by cause, queue, agent, and timing. A call is treated as unanswered when its log user id is the system value VDAD or VDCL rather than a real agent login, so the numbers here describe what the dialer placed or received but could not connect.

What the all-calls block tells you

The top block summarises the unanswered set. The "N. calls unanswered" figure should always match the unanswered count in the "Total calls processed" line of the report header, so it is the first number to sanity-check. Wait time before disconnection comes only from inbound calls through the queue_sec value, because outbound calls have no waiting period; you get the average, minimum, maximum, and total. Coverage is always shown as 100 percent, and position at disconnection is listed as unmeasurable, so do not read meaning into those two rows.

There is also a "time interval" variant of the same data that counts only calls falling fully inside your report period. Calls that started before the window opened or ended after it are excluded there, which is useful when you are comparing two adjacent days and do not want overlap to double-count.

The sub-reports worth your time

Disconnection causes breaks down why each unanswered call dropped, with a count and percentage per reason and a pie chart of the whole set. The unanswered-by-agent cut almost always collapses to the single VDAD/VDCL system agent, which is expected; it confirms these were dialer-placed calls and not real Agent handoffs. The unanswered-by-campaign/ingroup cut is more actionable because it tells you which Campaign or Ingroup is leaking.

• Distribution by length (inbound only): groups dropped inbound calls into time buckets, 5-second intervals up to 20 seconds and 10-second intervals after that. The deltas between buckets show whether callers abandon early or hang on.
• By keypress/option: counts the IVR (interactive voice response) menu selections unanswered calls made. Because one call can press several keys, the total can exceed the call count.
• DID used and IVR selection: attribute unanswered calls to the inbound number or the Call menu path the caller followed, with "Untracked" for calls that bypassed a DID or IVR.

The Call overview sub-report ties it together per queue: offered, answered, lost, average length, total length, and waiting time. That is the cut most managers read alongside their live numbers in the real-time main report, because together they show both what is happening now and what was lost over the period.

How a call lands in this report

flowchart TD
  A[Call in report window] --> B{Log user id}
  B -->|Real agent login| C[Answered report]
  B -->|VDAD or VDCL| D[Unanswered report]
  D --> E[Disconnection causes]
  D --> F[By campaign or ingroup]
  D --> G[Distribution by length inbound]
  D --> H[Call overview per queue]

For the wider tour of VERM and its companion screens, start with the VICIdial reports overview. VICIfast ships VICIdial with VERM ready to run on a branded HTTPS subdomain in under 40 seconds, so the Unanswered report is populated from your first paid call. See pricing to get started.