When to turn on AMD and when to leave it off

Turn AMD on when your campaign hits a lot of voicemail and the agent minutes saved are worth the processing cost. Leave it off when a longer dial timeout would do the same job for free — which, for a lot of campaigns, it would.

When AMD earns its keep

The case for AMD (answering machine detection) is strongest when machines are a big share of your answers. If half your connected calls are voicemail, every one of those is an agent sitting through a greeting and a beep for nothing. Filtering them out reclaims real talk time.

• High machine rates — aged lists, consumer numbers, daytime calling into cellphones that roll to voicemail.
• You want to leave a recorded prompt on machines — a controlled Voicemail drop rather than a hang-up.
• You have the time to tune it and watch the Contact rate for false positives.

Why a dial timeout often wins instead

Here is the trade most operators miss. AMD analyzes every answered call, so it adds a delay to the human ones too, and it will occasionally hang up on a real person. A plain Dial timeout set to 22 to 26 seconds sidesteps both problems: most voicemails don't pick up until the call has already timed out, so they never reach an agent in the first place. No analysis delay, no false positives, no tuning.

flowchart TD
  A[Outbound campaign] --> B{Machine rate high?}
  B -->|No| C[Set dial timeout 22-26s]
  B -->|Yes| D{Manual or inbound-manual?}
  D -->|Yes| C
  D -->|No| E{Worth tuning and watching FP?}
  E -->|No| C
  E -->|Yes| F[Enable AMD]

For most campaigns the timeout is the right first move. It costs you nothing in agent experience, and you can always layer AMD on later if the machine rate stays high after you have squeezed the timeout. The order matters: prove the cheap fix first, measure what is left, and only reach for AMD when the numbers say the processing cost is worth paying. Reaching for AMD on day one, before you know your real machine rate, usually buys you tuning headaches you did not need.

When you cannot use AMD at all

So the Dial method decides the question before machine rate even comes up. On a Campaign using ratio or adaptive dialing, AMD is on the table; on a manual campaign it is not.

If you do want to understand exactly how the detection works before you commit, read how VICIdial decides a call is a machine. And keep an eye on your drop figures either way — how to lower your VICIdial drop rate covers the pacing side. The complete AMD and CPD guide ties it all together.

Whichever way you go, you need a server where you control the campaign settings. VICIfast provisions a dedicated VICIdial box in under 40 seconds so you can switch AMD on, off, or trade it for a dial timeout yourself. See plans and pricing.