A dialer system I am working on (v2.3) is passing about 30% of answering machines and voicemails to agents - I presume it's not detecting them properly so it's sending them out of doubt to the agent. What is the best way to improve this handling? A similar Outbound dialer application running on Avaya is only passing <1% to the agents. If there is no decent solution, is it possible that when the agent hears the answering machine message that they can press a button on the interface that would: remove the agent from the call and put them back in queue, wait for the beep and automatically leave the regular pre-recorded message and then disposition the call. that wouldn't be ideal - but might work. Thanks

Vic - Industry standards are from 7% - 10% error in answering machine detection. If its lower (1%), then the ring no answer time is probably set very low and you're hanging up on live voices. WE tried that here and the idea was to hang up before an answering machine could even start but then you're only giving people 4 rings to get to the phone. As for the sensitivity, I can't remember if you can adjust that in 2.3. Are you using a carded system or SIP gateways?

Vic, As Dennis was saying; you should typically see 90% or better on call analysis accuracy in terms of live voice vs. answering machine. The first things to verify are the basics: 1) Make sure that every campaign is set to properly route answering machine detections; it's possible that somebody changed something and set answering machines to route to agents. 2) Make sure that call analysis and answering machine detection is enabled within the dialer configuration. 3) You can also check the Dialer logs for the "MakeCall return." statement; it displays the call analysis result. This will verify what result is being determined; if it shows answering machine and goes to an agent, then it is a configuration issue; likewise, if it shows live party, but was a machine, it is a call analysis issue. Within the "MakeCall return." statement you'll see "Answering Device:<1>" where "1" is the call analysis result. 0 = No Answer, 1 = Live voice, 2 = SIT, 3 = Fax, and 4 = Answering Machine. Call analysis is actually done by the telephony equipment with the result passed to Dialer, so if it is in fact a call analysis issue, you'd have to look there. In 2.3.1 we don't support call analysis being done on SIP gateways, so they are probably using a boarded solution (Aculab or Dialogic). A couple things to check are: 1) Verify that the "Answering Machine Analysis Type" parameter within the Telephony Parameters on the Server Configuration is set to "Accurate" 2) Enable diagnostic recordings and listen to the call analysis recordings of a few calls that were improperly detected; did the actually sound like answering machines or was there a long pause after just a couple words, or maybe a very short greeting, etc. 3) Aculab has some parameters that can be configured/tweaked for call analysis, but I won't get into those details here. If they are still having a high miss-detection rate after all of that, I would recommend that they open a support ticket for more detailed analysis. Thanks, Sean

Thanks Sean and Dennis for the great information and the quick response. I'll let you know how it goes and hopefully I can help resolve this without a support call. Vic

Vic, did you try it?

Yes, I've been slowly working my way through the list. The system is off-shore so it has been a bit challenging to get the connectivity working. I was able to check the configuration and verify the basics as listed above. The Dialer configuration seems to be correct as are the Telephony parameters. I was able to get some example call ids and look at them in the Dialer trace logs. They are complaining about "dead air" calls where the agents is passed a call but there is nobody on the other end. Looking at the logs these are identified in the MakeCall return line as "1 = live voice" calls. The other calls they are complaining about are answering machine calls that go to agents. These calls only show in the log as "no answer" calls. I don't see where these calls are going to agents but that is what they are saying they are doing. I'm wondering about the trace level. It is currently set to 61 (status) and I am wondering if it needs to be set up to 80 to really see what is going on? So I think the next step is to up the trace level and capture a few more problem call ids. If that doesn't give me much more information then I will setup some recordings to listen to what is going on to see if there is any clue. If this does come down to a call analysis issue with the telephony boards, Sean mentions some Aculab tweaks however this system is on Dialogic. Is there any parameters to work with on Dialogic boards? If worse comes to worse is it worth trying a different card or perhaps a different carrier in the hope of getting more accurate call analysis? Thanks Vic

Vic, Take a look at this thread: http://community.inin.com/forums/showthread.php?t=3584 It talks about the parameters you can 'tweak' to fine tune your answering machine detection. You will definitely want to run any changes by support before implementing. Also - its my understanding that there is no difference between 61 and 80 on the trace level. Hope this helps.

Hello Dear,

Did you find a solution for this issue , please let me know 

Thanks

------------------------------
Mahmoud Kamal
IST Integration Services And Technologies Co.
------------------------------

Original Message:
Sent: 06-18-2008 16:50
From: A Contributor
Subject: Better Answering Machine detection?

A dialer system I am working on (v2.3) is passing about 30% of answering machines and voicemails to agents - I presume it's not detecting them properly so it's sending them out of doubt to the agent. What is the best way to improve this handling?
A similar Outbound dialer application running on Avaya is only passing <1% to the agents.

If there is no decent solution, is it possible that when the agent hears the answering machine message that they can press a button on the interface that would: remove the agent from the call and put them back in queue, wait for the beep and automatically leave the regular pre-recorded message and then disposition the call. that wouldn't be ideal - but might work.

Thanks

Mahmoud,

This is quite an old thread, so you might want to post a new question with specific areas of concern / observed behaviours with your version of IC.

FWIW, my understanding is that IC's AMD is pretty good, with an accuracy well above 90%. What kind of rate are you experiencing?

Hi Paul,

I need to ask about Call analysis Detection accuracy in Pureconnect Dialer 2019 R4, Should  It be 100%? my customer is suffering from a very little bit errors in Answermachine or no answer detection and the calls are transferring to Agents

Thanks for your reply 

Mahmoud

------------------------------
Mahmoud Kamal
IST Integration Services And Technologies Co.
------------------------------

Original Message:
Sent: 03-13-2020 15:13
From: Paul Simpson
Subject: Better Answering Machine detection?

Mahmoud,

This is quite an old thread, so you might want to post a new question with specific areas of concern / observed behaviours with your version of IC.

FWIW, my understanding is that IC's AMD is pretty good, with an accuracy well above 90%. What kind of rate are you experiencing?

------------------------------
Paul Simpson
Senior Technical Instructor

Original Message:
Sent: 03-13-2020 12:35
From: Mahmoud Kamal
Subject: Better Answering Machine detection?

Hello Dear,

Did you find a solution for this issue , please let me know

Thanks

------------------------------
Mahmoud Kamal
IST Integration Services And Technologies Co.

Original Message:
Sent: 06-18-2008 16:50
From: A Contributor
Subject: Better Answering Machine detection?

A dialer system I am working on (v2.3) is passing about 30% of answering machines and voicemails to agents - I presume it's not detecting them properly so it's sending them out of doubt to the agent. What is the best way to improve this handling?
A similar Outbound dialer application running on Avaya is only passing <1% to the agents.

If there is no decent solution, is it possible that when the agent hears the answering machine message that they can press a button on the interface that would: remove the agent from the call and put them back in queue, wait for the beep and automatically leave the regular pre-recorded message and then disposition the call. that wouldn't be ideal - but might work.

Thanks

Hey Mahmoud,

You say "very little bit errors". Can you quantify?

I think it's fair to say that no system will be 100% accurate, but PureConnect Dialer should be able to achive well in excess of 90% accuracy. There will always be false-positives (detecting a Live Party as a Machine) and false-negatives (detecting a machine as a Live Party). It is the latter that you are seeing as answering machines being transferred to agents.

If you feel that the error rate is higher than it should be, I suggest opening a support ticket to have our engineers look at it.