CID Group Failover explained

A CID Group is great until you call a lead whose area code is not in the group. With no matching entry, the group has nothing to send. CID Group Failover is the safety net for exactly that case: a second group VICIdial reaches for when the first one comes up empty. It is a small setting that prevents an awkward gap.

The problem it solves

A regular CID Group matches a lead's number to an area code or state and sends the matching CID (caller ID). But lead lists are messy. You import a fresh Lead list and it turns out a handful of leads sit in area codes you never added to your group. For those leads, the main group has no answer. Without failover, the dialer drops down the priority chain and may send the plain campaign number, which defeats the point of rotating regional numbers. Worse, an unexpected default number on a chunk of your dials can dent your Answer rate without you noticing where the drop came from.

What failover does

CID Group Failover names a second group. When the main group has no match for the area code or state being called, VICIdial uses the failover group instead. If the main group does have a match, failover is never touched. So it only ever activates on the leftover leads, which is exactly what you want.

Both the main CID Group and the failover are set on the campaign through their own fields. Each defaults to disabled, so failover does nothing until you point it at a real group.

How to set one up

Build a second CID Group whose job is to catch everything the main group misses. A few common patterns:

• A small group with a handful of broad-coverage numbers and one default entry, so any unmatched lead still gets something sensible.
• A national Toll-free number number group, if you would rather odd-region leads see a toll-free number than a random local one.
• A copy of your main group expanded to cover more states, used as the failover while you keep the tight regional group as the primary.

Set the failover field on the campaign to that second group, save, and test with a lead in an area code you deliberately left out of the main group. The failover number should appear.

A common mistake to avoid

Do not point the failover at the same group you set as the main one. If the main group already had no match, the identical failover will not either, and you are back where you started. The failover group should be broader, or have a catch-all entry, so it can answer for the numbers the main group cannot. It also helps to review your lead lists for stray area codes before a run, so failover stays a rare backstop rather than something half your dials lean on. If you find a large share of leads falling through, that is a signal to widen the main group rather than rely on the backup.

Where it sits

Failover is purely a backstop for your CID Group, so it ranks right alongside the group itself in the caller-ID priority order, below any list-level override. It is one of the small touches that keeps an outbound Campaign tidy. For the bigger picture of dialer controls, see our VICIdial dialing strategies guide, and if your real issue is abandoned calls rather than caller ID, read how to lower your VICIdial drop rate. To stand up a dialer in under a minute and try this, see our pricing.