Run an AI calling campaign
The VICIdial campaign and leads an AI agent works: the settings that matter, what happens on each call, and what lands on the lead.
AI & automation · 5 min read
An AI agent that makes calls works an ordinary VICIdial campaign. VICIdial dials your leads, and when a person answers, the call goes to the AI instead of to a person. A few campaign settings matter more than usual. This page covers them, your leads, and what happens on every call.
Set up the agent itself first: AI agents: voice agents for your calls.
How the AI joins your campaign
When you click Go live, VICIfast logs the agent in to the campaign you picked in 5. Which calls as a VICIdial remote agent, with one line for each call it may take at once. You don't create that remote agent and shouldn't edit it: VICIfast keeps it at the number of AI calls at once set for the agent.
Campaign settings
In VICIdial, open the campaign and check these:
- Dial Prefix and Manual Dial Prefix: 8000. That sends the calls through VICIfast Voice, with your caller ID and answering-machine detection. With no prefix the calls may have nowhere to go, and another carrier's prefix skips VICIfast Voice.
- Dial Method: VICIfast keeps a live AI campaign on adaptive dialing (ADAPT_HARD_LIMIT) with a drop limit of 3%. VICIdial then rings more numbers for each free AI line on lists full of answering machines, and slows down before it drops answered calls. Your Auto Dial Level (where it starts) and Adaptive Maximum Dial Level (how hard it may go) stay yours.
- Drop Call Seconds and Drop Action: what a person hears when they answer and every AI line is busy. Send them to your team's in-group, or play a short message that says who called and how to stop calls.
- Routing Extension 8369 turns on answering-machine detection. Machines are hung up, or hear your voicemail message, before the AI joins, so they cost no AI minutes. A person hears about 3 seconds of silence while it listens. 8368 skips detection: the pickup is faster, but the AI then answers machines too. It hangs up on a voicemail greeting within the first minute, and those seconds are billed.
- Local Call Time: when the campaign may dial, in each lead's time zone. This sets your calling hours. The calling hours on the agent page don't stop VICIdial dialing.
- Active: Y while you want it dialing. VICIfast may set it to N, for example when your wallet runs out, but never back to Y. That is always yours to do.
- Keep people out of this campaign. Anyone logged in to it gets dialed calls too. Log your closers in to an inbound or manual campaign with the transfer queue selected.
The transfer queue
Each transfer you set up in 6. What it can do goes to an in-group. Keep people Ready in it: when nobody is, the caller waits in that queue like any inbound caller. Whoever answers sees the lead with a one-line summary in Comments, and the full outcome behind the comment history button next to it.
Your leads
- Load them into a list that belongs to the campaign, as you would for people: a 10-digit phone number, status NEW, and the time zone set (load with time-zone lookup on).
- The AI reads the lead before it speaks: city, state, email, address and up to 12 other short fields, custom fields included. Put what it should know there, for example the product they asked about.
- It uses the person's name only when Use the lead's name is on in 6. What it can do. It is off by default.
- Keep phone numbers unique across your active lists, so each call's results land on the right lead.
What happens on each call
- VICIdial dials a lead through VICIfast Voice.
- With Routing Extension 8369, answering-machine detection decides whether a person or a machine answered.
- A person is handed to a free AI line. The AI waits for them to say hello, then says your opening.
- It talks, using only the actions you switched on: transfer, outcome, callback, appointment, saving answers and do-not-call.
- When the call ends, the lead gets its status, a line in Comments, the full outcome in its comment history, the answers in their fields, and any callback or do-not-call entry.
- A transfer goes to your queue, and AI minutes stop at that moment.
- The call appears under Calls. Details shows its recording, transcript and every step it took, including whether it reached your queue.
Call results
Each call ends with one outcome. These are the VICIdial statuses they set by default. Change them in 6. What it can do, under Set the call outcome:
- Qualified, transferred: XFER
- Appointment booked: APPTBK
- Not interested, and Doesn't qualify: NI
- Callback requested: CALLBK
- Wrong number: WRONG
- Do not call: DNC
Put the statuses you want called again in the campaign's dial statuses, and leave the rest out.
How many calls run at once
- Your account runs up to 25 AI calls at once across all your agents, with short bursts above that. VICIfast sets the number; ask support if you need more. There is no plan to buy.
- Each agent's AI calls at once comes out of that.
- Extra lines on the remote agent, or another remote agent pointed at the AI, don't get you more. Calls over your number are refused before they reach the AI and go to the queue under When the agent can't take a call. VICIfast also puts the lines back.
Before you go live
- Dial Prefix and Manual Dial Prefix 8000, and Routing Extension 8369. VICIfast sets adaptive dialing and the 3% drop limit when you go live.
- Local Call Time set to your calling hours.
- Leads loaded with time zones, in an active list of the campaign.
- People Ready in the transfer queue, and nobody logged in to the AI's campaign.
- Money in your wallet.
- Drop Action set: your team's in-group, or a short message.
- A test call that transferred to your queue.
- Go live, with the consent box ticked.
