Answering machine and live human pickup detection

Question:

I am testing your product and it seems to dial my cell phone correctly. The advertisment is spoken, my message is presented, and the advertisment repeats. The call list seems to show activity long after I hang up the recieving telephone. Then the message is posted that Call was made and message was left on answering machine.

But really I answered and heard the message. Is this an error?

Also is there a way to have the message play faster and not delay after the party answers?

1. When the call hangs up, the system will disconnect and wait about 10 seconds to make sure the phone line is truely disconnected. In 5.x release, you can set this to 5 seconds minimum. For time less than 5 seconds, you are risking to call too early before the line is freed.

2. When the call is answered, the system has to make a prediction on whether it is a live human or an answering machine. Since there is no special signal for answering machine or voice mail, the system has to analyze the audio stream based on statistics and other factors. The detection algorithm Voicent implemented is very good, but no technology today can achieve 100% accuracy.

Voicent has spent a lot of engineering research and design to improve the accuracy. Actually, the newly released 5.0 beta has made some significant improvement in this area. For example, the background noise is filtered as much as possible automatically.

On the other hand, a clear telephone line is very important. You can turn on Record Initial Dialing feature to further diagnose the issue.

3. In 5.0 release, you can instruct the system to play the message as soon as it hears human voice. It will play the message faster. However, it will mistake all answering machines as human, and any message left on answering machine will be cut off. There are other options you can tune in 5.0 release.