Outbound calls

Your assistant can do more than answer the phone: it can also call out, to confirm an appointment, follow up a quote or remind customers about their annual service. This article covers what you need, how to prepare the assistant for outbound calls, how campaigns work and how to start a single call through the API.

Requirements

• A number that may call out. Only numbers showing Incoming + outgoing in the Usage column under Settings → Phone numbers can make outbound calls. These are bought numbers and registered numbers that are with our carrier, such as a ported number. A forwarded number or a SIP number shows Incoming only and cannot. See Connect a phone number.
• A number we may call. We only call numbers in the countries we serve (listed in Connect a phone number); with +1, only US numbers. Premium-rate, shared-cost and personal numbers are never called, nor Dutch 090x and 097 numbers. Otherwise you see "This number cannot be called: we only call countries we serve, and never premium-rate numbers". A transfer to such a number is refused when you save it, and a campaign item with one fails.
• At most 60 single calls an hour. Calls from the dashboard and the API together, per account. Campaign calls do not count towards this.
• A plan with outbound calling. Outbound calling is part of Business, Pro and Enterprise, not Starter. Without one of these plans you can't start a call or a campaign, including through the API, and Customers → Campaigns shows only the message Outbound calling is not in your plan. A running campaign pauses; you resume it yourself once outbound calling is available again. If outbound calling is blocked for your business, a running campaign pauses too. If you then create or resume a campaign or call from the dashboard, you see the message "Outbound calling is blocked for this business. Contact support." Outbound calls count towards your usage.
• The right role. An Editor or Admin can create, pause and resume campaigns and call from the dashboard. A Viewer can only look at campaigns.
• A greeting for outbound calls. If you leave Outbound greeting empty, the assistant opens with the normal Greeting.
• Consent and calling rules. You are responsible for complying with the law: only call people who have given consent or with whom you have a customer relationship, respect do-not-call registers and keep to reasonable calling hours. Set your calling window accordingly.

Outbound greeting

On an inbound call the assistant speaks the Greeting. On an outbound call it uses the Outbound greeting, as soon as the person called answers. You set both on the assistant's Voice & greeting tab. Outbound greeting is only visible when outbound calling is in your plan.

A good outbound greeting says straight away who is calling and why:

Good afternoon, this is {{assistant.name}} from {{company.name}}. I'm calling about your service appointment. Is now a good time?

If you use one assistant for both inbound and outbound calls, tell it in the instructions how to behave in each situation. For example, under Conversation flow on the Instructions tab:

If this is an outbound call: introduce yourself, state the reason for the call and ask whether now is convenient. If not, ask when you may call back.
If this is an inbound call: ask how you can help.

You can use variables in the Outbound greeting: {{assistant.name}}, {{company.name}} and your other business details, and campaign variables such as {{name}} or {{appointment_date}} from your CSV file (see below). The assistant also receives those values as data during the call. They are not filled in within the instructions: {{name}} becomes empty there, so write "the customer's name" instead.

{{contact.name}} stays empty on an outbound call, even if the number is under Customers → Contacts, because the call is only linked to the contact afterwards. So put the name in your CSV file and use {{name}}.

Voicemail detection

If nobody answers but a voicemail starts, the platform detects it. The assistant waits for the voicemail's greeting to end, leaves a fixed message and hangs up, rather than trying to hold a conversation with an answering machine. You can't change this message. It is in the assistant's language and mentions your company name:

Hello, this is an automated message from {{company.name}}. We tried to reach you.

The contact then gets the status Voicemail in the campaign, and the conversation the outcome Voicemail in the Inbox. An IVR menu or a fax doesn't hear the greeting either. After the call is answered, the assistant waits up to three seconds for the detection result. If no result arrives in that time, it greets the person called, so a human is not left in silence.

This is separate from the Voicemail task on the Tasks tab, which lets someone speaking with the assistant leave you a message.

Campaigns

With a campaign the assistant works through a list of numbers automatically, one at a time, within a daily calling window and with a configurable interval.

1. Go to Customers → Campaigns and click New campaign. A panel opens on the right.
2. Give the campaign a name and choose the number under Call from number and the assistant under Assistant. If that number has its own assistant for outgoing calls, you see This number always calls with … instead of the list.
3. Set Start, Calling window, Seconds between calls and Max attempts.
4. Paste your list into the CSV field or choose a CSV file below it.
5. Click Create campaign. The campaign gets the status Scheduled and moves to Running by itself at the start time.

Setting	Meaning	Default
Name	Internal name, e.g. "Autumn service 2026"	—
Call from number	The number to call from. The list only shows numbers that may call out.	—
Assistant	The assistant that makes the calls	—
Start	When the campaign begins	Filled in for you; check the time
Calling window	Between which times calls may be made, every day of the week, in your business's time zone. Outside the window the campaign waits automatically.	09:00–17:00
Seconds between calls	Minimum time between the start of two calls, from 10 to 3600. The campaign also waits for the previous call to end, for up to 10 minutes, and starts at most one call per minute, so less than 60 seconds makes no difference.	60
Max attempts	How many times in total a contact is called on no answer, busy or a failed call, from 1 to 5	2
CSV	The phone column is required (phone_number and telefoon also work), with the same column names as a contact import. Every extra column becomes a variable, e.g. the column name becomes {{name}}. At most 50,000 numbers and 5 million characters.	—

An example CSV file:

phone,name,appointment_date
+447700900123,Jan de Vries,Tuesday 16 September at 10:00
+447700900456,Fatima El Amrani,Wednesday 17 September at 14:00

In the Outbound greeting you then use those columns as {{name}} and {{appointment_date}}. Copy the column name exactly and use only letters, digits and _ in it. The number called is available as {{phone_number}}.

Write every number in international form, as in the example. A number starting with 0 is read as a Dutch number, and rows without a valid number are skipped. A campaign calls every number on the list, so remove blocked contacts yourself.

Every contact in the campaign has a status:

Status	Meaning
Pending	Not called yet
Calling	The number is being called right now
Completed	Answered and the call has ended; not called again
No answer	Not answered; retried if attempts remain
Voicemail	Voicemail detected, message left; not called again
Busy	Engaged; retried if attempts remain
Failed	The call could not be set up, for example because of an invalid number; retried if attempts remain

A new attempt only comes once every Pending contact has had its turn. There is no separate waiting time between attempts. When nothing is left to call, the campaign gets the status Completed. If the assistant no longer exists, it gets the status Failed.

The campaign list has search, a status filter, an assistant filter, a Progress column with the number of contacts called out of the total, and a Load more button. A campaign's page shows its settings and, per contact, the status, the number of attempts and the last attempt; click Refresh for the latest state.

You can Pause a campaign with the status Scheduled or Running and Resume it later; a call in progress is finished properly. If you resume a campaign that had not begun yet, it begins straight away, within the calling window. You can't change or delete a campaign once it is created.

For a contact that was called, the Conversation link opens the transcript and summary. These calls are also in the Inbox. You can't filter on a campaign there, but under Filters you can set Direction to Outbound; see Inbox & analytics. After the conversation actions work exactly the same for outbound calls as for inbound ones, so a campaign can also produce an email or webhook per call. An action without a condition also runs when nobody answered.

To call one number, go to the assistant itself: open Try it out, choose Real call, enter the number under Phone, choose Call from number and click Call now. Choose the country in the phone field and type the number as you dial it at home. A leading 0 is removed, and the call uses the international form.

Call on a contact's page opens a panel for that contact. Choose Call from number and Assistant and click Call now. If that number has its own assistant for outgoing calls, you see This number always calls with … instead of the list. The contact's name is then available as {{name}}.

Single calls via the API

Want to start one call from your own software, for example as soon as a customer requests a quote? Use the API:

curl -X POST https://<api-domain>/v1/calls \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer pk_your_api_key" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "to": "+447700900123",
    "assistantId": "01J…",
    "from": "+442012345678",
    "variables": { "name": "Jan" }
  }'

The response:

{ "conversationId": "v3:…", "status": "dialing" }

from and variables are optional. Without from, the first number that may call out is used. The fields in variables fill {{name}} in the Outbound greeting and the assistant receives the values as data, just as with campaigns. Follow the call in the Inbox or through an after-the-call webhook. All details, including error codes, are in API.

After a downgrade or a missed payment

Outbound calling is part of Business, Pro and Enterprise. When you switch to Starter (you confirm what stops first), or your subscription ends, running and scheduled campaigns are paused at once and nothing is deleted; you can resume them on a plan with outbound calling. While a payment is open and the subscription is paused, the next due call pauses the campaign too; resume it once the invoice is paid. See Subscription & invoices.

Related articles

• Connect a phone number
• API
• Contacts
• Inbox & analytics