PowerDialer detects whether a human or an answering machine picked up. What happens next is decided by two settings in Power dialing configs.
The three outcomes
1. You have a voicemail enabled. The recording is played into the machine and the line is released. The call is logged so you can disposition it as Left Voicemail.
2. Skip machine calls is ticked. The line is hung up as soon as a machine is detected and the dialer moves to the next contact. Nothing is left behind.
3. Neither. The call plays 45 seconds of silence and then ends.
That third case is the system's fallback, not a feature. The app warns you about it in the settings panel:
Calls to voicemail will play 45s of silence (carrier compliance). Upload a voicemail for a better lead experience.
The silence exists because the call has been answered and something has to be on the line; a call that connects and immediately drops is exactly the pattern carriers score as spam. But from the contact's side it is a silent call from an unknown number, which is the worst possible impression, and it costs you 45 seconds of minutes per machine.
Pick one of the other two. Always.
Which to pick
| Situation | Choose |
|---|---|
| Cold outbound where a callback is plausible | Voicemail drop |
| Very large cold list, low-value contacts | Skip machine calls |
| Re-engaging people who know you | Voicemail drop, with a different script for each attempt |
| You are dialing at 4 or 5 parallel lines | Voicemail drop — you will hit a lot of machines |
The two settings are mutually exclusive: ticking Skip machine calls is disabled while voicemail is enabled.
Detection is not perfect
Answering machine detection listens to the first moments of the call. A human who answers with a long scripted greeting can be classified as a machine, and a short machine greeting can be classified as a human.
If reps report being connected to voicemails, or contacts report receiving a voicemail when they answered in person, raise it — the detection tuning is a platform setting, not something you change per account.
Dispositioning machines
Use Left Voicemail when you left a message, and Answering Machine when you reached one and did not. Both sync to the CRM as an attempted contact and keep the contact in the queue, but they mean different things in your reports — the voicemail rate is how you find out whether your drops are worth anything.