What the "Instant kill" checkpoint option does

Most QC checkpoints add up to a total score. Instant kill is the exception. When a checkpoint has Instant kill set, failing that one checkpoint can fail the entire QC record on its own — no matter how well every other checkpoint scored. It is the hard line in your scorecard.

Think of it as a non-negotiable rule. A call could ace the greeting, the verification, and the close, but if it trips an Instant kill checkpoint, the whole call is marked failed.

When to use it

Instant kill is for the things that cannot be traded off against good scores elsewhere. Common cases:

• A legally required disclosure was skipped.
• The Agent was rude or used prohibited language.
• A do-not-call request was ignored.
• The customer's identity was never verified before sensitive details were shared.

These are the failures where a high overall score should not save the call. The point of Instant kill is to make the scorecard reflect that. A scorecard without an Instant kill checkpoint treats every item as just another slice of the total, so a serious mistake can be averaged away by strong scores elsewhere. For most operations that is the wrong outcome for compliance items, and Instant kill is how you carve out the exceptions.

Instant kill is a yes/no flag on the checkpoint, not a score in itself. You still write the checkpoint as a normal item the reviewer grades. The flag is what tells the system that a failing grade on this particular checkpoint should fail the whole record, rather than just subtract a few points from the total.

How it changes the outcome

stateDiagram-v2
  [*] --> Scoring
  Scoring --> CheckInstantKill: reviewer scores checkpoints
  CheckInstantKill --> FAIL: instant kill checkpoint failed
  CheckInstantKill --> NormalTotal: no instant kill triggered
  NormalTotal --> PASS: total acceptable
  NormalTotal --> FAIL: total too low
  FAIL --> [*]
  PASS --> [*]

The diagram shows the key idea: an Instant kill checkpoint short-circuits the normal scoring. Without one triggered, the call passes or fails on its total. With one triggered, the call fails regardless of the total.

Setting it on a checkpoint

Instant kill is one of the six fields on a checkpoint, alongside Order, Active, the checkpoint text, Points, and Admin notes. You set it on the MODIFY screen for a scorecard. For a brand new checkpoint, fill the form including Instant kill and click the green ADD button. For an existing checkpoint, toggle the field and the change saves on its own.

Instant kill applies to the call regardless of which entity the scorecard is attached to — Campaign, list, or Ingroup. As with every checkpoint, the call only reaches review if its Disposition matched a QC status template, so Instant kill never touches calls that were never eligible in the first place.

One more thing to watch: like any checkpoint change, turning Instant kill on or off is not retroactive on a call that has already been claimed for review. If you add an Instant kill flag after a reviewer has claimed a call, that call keeps the rules it was claimed under until it is released and re-claimed. So if you are tightening a scorecard to add a hard-fail rule, expect it to apply only to calls claimed after the change.

For the wider context of how checkpoints, points, and review queues fit together, read the VICIdial quality control overview. To see how the checkpoints that an Instant kill can override are assembled in the first place, see how to build a QC scorecard from checkpoints.

VICIfast runs all of this on a managed, hardened VICIdial box, live in under 40 seconds. See our plans and pricing.