What the Drop Action MESSAGE Setting Does

Drop Action is a single campaign field with a big job. It tells VICIdial what to do with a call that gets answered by a consumer but cannot be handed to an agent fast enough, which is what the FTC calls an Abandoned call. Every dialer that pushes calls faster than agents can take them will produce some of these, so the question is never whether you will drop calls but what those callers experience when you do.

MESSAGE Versus HANGUP and the Other Options

Set Drop Action to MESSAGE and a dropped consumer is routed to the recording named in your Safe Harbor Exten field, which states your company name, why you called, and a callback number. That is the option FTC Safe Harbor expects, because a dropped call has to leave the consumer with a way to reach you. Set it to HANGUP and the dialer simply disconnects, which leaves the consumer with a dead line and no information. Other values exist, such as sending the call into an in-group queue or to voicemail, but for a straightforward outbound sales campaign MESSAGE is the setting that keeps you on the right side of the rule.

Drop Action only matters because of the 3 percent ceiling: across a 30-day period, no more than 3 percent of your answered calls per campaign are allowed to be drops. That ceiling drives your Abandonment rate and your Drop rate reporting. To understand the math behind the limit, read the 3 percent abandonment rule. The pillar VICIdial compliance overview ties Drop Action to the rest of your Safe Harbor configuration.

How Drop Action Decides the Outcome

flowchart LR
  A[Call dropped] --> B{Drop Action}
  B -->|MESSAGE| C[Play Safe Harbor recording]
  B -->|HANGUP| D[Disconnect silently]
  B -->|IN GROUP| E[Send to queue]
  C --> F[Compliant outcome]
  D --> G[Non compliant risk]

The flow shows the branch point. Once a call is classified as a drop, Drop Action is the switch that routes it. MESSAGE leads to a compliant outcome; HANGUP leads to a silent disconnect that can put your campaign at risk during an audit.

Because this field is set per campaign, check it on every active campaign, not just the one you built first. A campaign cloned from an old template can quietly carry a HANGUP setting forward. VICIfast pre-configures Drop Action to MESSAGE on new campaigns so you start compliant by default. See pricing for plans.