AM Message Wildcards: A Different Voicemail Per Lead

Most campaigns play one answering-machine message to every voicemail box they reach. AM Message Wildcards change that. With the feature on, VICIdial can look at a value in the lead record and pick a different message based on what it finds. That means one campaign can leave a Spanish message for some leads and English for others, or a different store location, or a different agent name, all driven by data already on the lead.

What the setting does

AM Message Wildcards is a toggle on the campaign's answering-machine settings. The default is N, for disabled. When you set it to Y and submit, a link appears to the AM Message Wildcard administration page. On that page you define the wildcards: each rule matches data in a default lead field and maps it to a message to play. When a machine is detected and a voicemail message is about to drop, the system checks the lead (Lead) against your wildcards and plays the message that matches.

This sits on top of answering machine detection (AMD (answering machine detection)). Detection still does the work of deciding a machine answered; the wildcards only decide which audio to play once that decision is made, so it ties directly into your voicemail-drop (Voicemail drop) flow.

How a message gets chosen

flowchart TD
  A[Machine detected] --> B{AM Message Wildcards on}
  B -->|No| C[Play default Answering Machine Message]
  B -->|Yes| D[Read the lead field value]
  D --> E{Value matches a wildcard}
  E -->|Yes| F[Play that wildcard message]
  E -->|No| C

The flow is straightforward. When a machine is detected, the dialer reads the chosen lead field. If the value matches one of your wildcard rules, it plays that rule's message. If nothing matches, it falls back to the standard Answering Machine Message for the campaign. So your default message still acts as the safety net for leads that do not fit any rule.

How to set it up

1. Open the campaign and set AM Message Wildcards to Y, then submit.
2. Click the new link to the AM Message Wildcard administration page.
3. Add a wildcard for each value you want to match in the default lead field.
4. Point each wildcard at the prompt you want that group of leads to hear.
5. Keep a sensible default Answering Machine Message for leads that match nothing.

A practical tip: make sure the lead field you match on is actually populated when you load your lead-list (Lead list). If the field is blank for most leads, the wildcards never fire and everyone gets the default message. Load the matching value during import so the rules have something to read.

As with any voicemail prompt, record each wildcard message twice in its file so a clipped start still gets heard once. The wildcards pick the audio, but the same beginning-cut-off problem applies to every message you drop on a machine.

Where this fits

Per-lead messaging is one of the finer controls in the message-drop toolkit. For the full picture, read our AMD and CPD guide, and if you want to cap how often any one lead hears these messages, see the Voicemail Message Daily Limit.

VICIfast sets up the audio store and campaign wildcards for you, so per-lead voicemail is a few clicks rather than a project. See VICIfast pricing to get a dialer tuned to your lists.