Customer 3-Way Hangup Seconds: tuning how fast a customer hangup is logged

When your fronter pulls a closer onto a live call, three people are sharing one bridge. The moment the customer drops off that bridge, you want VICIdial to notice quickly and react predictably. The Customer 3-Way Hangup Seconds setting controls exactly how long the dialer waits after it detects the customer leaving before it writes that hangup to the log and runs any follow-up action.

What the setting actually does

A Three-way call is a bridge holding the Agent, the customer, and a third party such as a Closer or a specialist. This timer only matters when Customer 3-Way Hangup Logging is enabled, which tells VICIdial to write a record to the user call log when the customer hangs up mid-bridge. The seconds value is the pause between detecting that drop and acting on it. The default is 5 seconds.

That short delay exists for a reason. Carrier audio and the underlying Hangup cause signalling do not always arrive cleanly the instant a line clears, so a brief wait lets the dialer confirm the customer is genuinely gone rather than reacting to a momentary blip.

How the timer decides the outcome

flowchart TD
  A[Agent and closer in 3-way bridge] --> B[Customer hangs up]
  B --> C{Hangup logging enabled}
  C -->|No| D[Nothing logged]
  C -->|Yes| E[Start hangup seconds timer]
  E --> F{Timer reaches set value}
  F -->|Default 5 seconds| G[Log customer hangup]
  G --> H{Hangup action defined}
  H -->|Yes| I[Run the action]
  H -->|No| J[Agent and closer keep talking]

Choosing a value

The default 5 seconds works for most campaigns. Here is how to think about adjusting it:

• Shorter, such as 2 or 3 seconds, if your agents need to move on fast and your carrier signals hangups cleanly. The trade-off is a higher chance of acting on a false drop.
• Longer, such as 8 to 10 seconds, if customers on your routes sometimes come back after a flaky reconnect, or if you want the fronter a beat to confirm the customer really left before the screen reacts.

Remember the seconds value and the hangup action are a pair. The timer is the delay; the action is what happens when it expires. If you have set the action to send the agent to Disposition, a longer timer means the agent stays on the bridge with the closer for those extra seconds before the disposition screen appears.

How it interacts with logging

It is easy to forget that this seconds value does nothing on its own. Customer 3-Way Hangup Logging has to be on for the dialer to even watch the bridge for the customer leaving. If logging is off, there is no detection event, so there is no timer to count down and no record written to the user call log. Turn the logging on first, confirm you actually see customer drops appearing in your records, and only then start tweaking the seconds.

A practical way to find your number is to listen to a handful of recorded bridges where the customer left early. If the customer was clearly gone for good each time, you can safely shorten the timer. If you spot a couple of cases where the line came back and the conversation continued, lean toward the longer end so you do not punish those reconnects. The same reasoning that governs a Recording delay applies here: a small buffer prevents the system from reacting to a transient state it cannot yet trust.

A quick checklist

1. Enable Customer 3-Way Hangup Logging so drops are detected and recorded.
2. Leave the seconds at the default 5 unless you have a concrete reason to change it.
3. Decide your hangup action separately, since the timer only sets when that action fires.
4. Review a few real 3-way drops and adjust the seconds based on what you actually hear.

Where this fits

This timer is one small dial in the larger handoff picture. For the full flow of transfers and closers, start with the VICIdial transfers and closers guide. The logging switch that makes this timer relevant has its own walkthrough in customer 3-way hangup logging, and it is worth pairing both with how the bridge itself is built in a Campaign.

If you would rather skip the hand tuning and run a dialer where the 3-way and recording defaults are sane out of the box, take a look at our hosted VICIdial pricing.