Too many drop calls

[baka-na]

Hi everyone,

I just want to ask how to limit the no.of drop calls we're having. Or if its really drop calls

What we're having is like an agent receiving a blank call. After a few seconds of the agents doing "Hello!", the calls would automatically hangup. They dispose it as Abandon calls, since they said that a customer might be on the other side that they just don't hear. Result is we're having too many abandon calls every shift.

I've done turning off AMD, lower dial timeout and increasing drop seconds. But it still is happening.

ANy help appreciated.


Thanks in advance.

[baka-na]

Hi,

I tried checking some of these numbers on Vicidial's carrier log and found out that they were ANSWER in Dial Status and has 16 in Hangup Cause. Can you tell me what Hangup Cause 16 in Vicidial means?

Thank you very much.

[DomeDan]

hangup cause 16 is a normal answer http://www.voip-info.org/wiki/view/Aste ... angupcause

I've done turning off AMD, lower dial timeout and increasing drop seconds. But it still is happening.

try to decrease Drop Call Seconds instead,
test Drop Call Seconds = 0 and if the agents gets empty calls then the problem is elsewhere.
a good drop seconds might be 3 imo.
and set "Available Only Tally" to Y if it isn't already.

you need to give us more info about your situation, number of agents, dial method and so on

[baka-na]

Thanks DomeDan for your reply.

What does normal clearing means? I got these Hangup Case=16, then Dial Status=Answer. Although Answered Time is from 0-1secs only, and dial time is about 4-35secs.

I'll set Drop Call seconds to 3 then. Then we're set to Dial Method=Ratio; Level=3; Available Only Tally=Y. 14 agents doing outbound.

Thanks in advance.

[williamconley]

be sure your "available only tally" is set to Y

also change your "max calls per second" to ONE (if you have less than 10 agents, TWO if less than 20, etc). This can "smooth out" your dialing and allow calls to be more spread out (instead of being bunched up in groups). If you dial 10 calls at once, and 4 answer a few seconds later ... but you only have 2 agents available, you're going to drop some calls. But if you dial those calls one per second, by the time the fourth person answers the 1st one may already be off the phone and the agent will be available to take the call!)

[baka-na]

Hi William,

Thanks for those inputs.

BTW, we're still having blank/empty calls when I have the settings above. I listened to the recordings made and some of these calls lasts 30secs with no one answering the agents. Do you think Vicidial have forwarded some of the drop calls to the agents? I get Dial Status=Answer checking those numbers on carrier log.

Thanks a lot in advance.

[DomeDan]

Do you think Vicidial have forwarded some of the drop calls to the agents?

No your saying it wrong, Vicidial set status DROP when the lead was not transferred to a agent.
A reason for blank calls would be if there is no agent available when the lead answers the phone, vicidial waits "Drop Call Seconds" for a agent to be ready to take a call
vicidial forwards the live call to the agent and them maybe the lead has already hung up because no one was there.

Set "Drop Call Seconds" = 0 to prevent vicidial to hold the lead if no agents are available,
if they still receive blank calls then call the phone number that was blank and check if someone answers,
and if they answer then you can ask them what they were expericene when they were calls by the dialer

[baka-na]

Thanks DomeDan,

Ah I see, there wouldn't be any DROP calls that will be forwarded to the agents. But several of these blank calls have 0-1secs of answer time on the carrier log and has hangup case = 16. Do you think that the problem is with the telco of these nos.?

Thanks in advance.

[DomeDan]

I dont think its a telco related problem, but It wont hurt to call them and ask.

check the asterisk CLI when this happens (or the logs) maybe something strange will pop up

[baka-na]

Already set the Drop Call Seconds=0, and Available Only Tally=Y but still having blank calls.

Thanks for all the responses. I'll dig deeper to this.

Regards

[baka-na]

Yesterday, we noticed some of the calls being tagged as AA by Vicidial. After an hour, it was again dialled and this time forwarded to agents as an empty call.

[DomeDan]

Are you using answering machine detection?

[baka-na]

yes. We have the routing extension at 8369.

[DomeDan]

Try disable it and see if the problem goes away

[baka-na]

Hi DomeDan,

Thanks for the assistance. I already turned off AMD, but unfortunately, still getting empty calls. I already tried putting it in public, bypassing the firewall, but nothing happened. Still getting lots of those. Any idea what causes these?

Thanks a lot!

[baka-na]

I have asked our VOIP carrier for the logs of these blank/empty calls thinking that it might be a codec problem or something on their side. But the empty calls that the agents have been receiving were connected.

Session 10203743-495152770@69.94.226.135, Release Cause (code) = 0001
Termination Stack Cause = 200, Normal BYE
Start = Tue Oct 23 15:41:30 2012
Answer = Tue Oct 23 15:41:43 2012
Release = Tue Oct 23 15:41:51 2012
Duration = 7
Post Dial Delay = 5
Ring Time = 8

Orig TID = 005254, Proc_SIP
ANI = *********, From = <our-server>
DNIS = *********, To = 69.94.226.174
RN = N/A
Call Leg ID = 7434fdb43358bb49530192441827cf99@<our-server>
Media IP:UDP = <our-server>:13206
Switched IP:UDP = 69.94.226.174:24008
Codec List = G.729,G.711u_64k,G.711a_64k,GSM,RFC 2833

__________________________________________________________________________________
Session 10247074-495791680@69.94.226.135, Release Cause (code) = 0001
Origination Stack Cause = 200, Normal BYE
Start = Tue Oct 23 15:52:09 2012
Answer = Tue Oct 23 15:52:17 2012
Release = Tue Oct 23 15:52:29 2012
Duration = 11
Post Dial Delay = 7
Ring Time = 1

Orig TID = 005254, Proc_SIP
ANI = ***********, From = <our-server>
DNIS = *************, To = 69.94.226.174
RN = N/A
Call Leg ID = 6b726c7b234fe3342c90e19d760ca747@<our-server>
Media IP:UDP = <our-server>:10600
Switched IP:UDP = 69.94.226.174:24588
Codec List = G.729,G.711u_64k,G.711a_64k,GSM,RFC 2833
______________________________________________________________________________________
Session 10254739-495907520@69.94.226.135, Release Cause (code) = 0001
Origination Stack Cause = 200, Normal BYE
Start = Tue Oct 23 15:54:05 2012
Answer = Tue Oct 23 15:54:16 2012
Release = Tue Oct 23 15:54:24 2012
Duration = 8
Post Dial Delay = 5
Ring Time = 6

Orig TID = 005254, Proc_SIP
ANI = ************, From = <our-server>
DNIS = ************, To = 69.94.226.174
RN = N/A
Call Leg ID = 38fb6f7301afddb37814b4c724a7e361@<our-server>
Media IP:UDP = <our-server>:14394
Switched IP:UDP = 69.94.226.174:28792
Codec List = G.729,G.711u_64k,G.711a_64k,GSM,RFC 2833


___________________________________________________________________________________________
Session 10290666-496436430@69.94.226.135, Release Cause (code) = 0001
Origination Stack Cause = 200, Normal BYE
Start = Tue Oct 23 16:02:54 2012
Answer = Tue Oct 23 16:02:57 2012
Release = Tue Oct 23 16:04:08 2012
Duration = 70
Post Dial Delay = 3
Ring Time = 1

Orig TID = 005254, Proc_SIP
ANI = ********, From = <our-server>
DNIS = *********, To = 69.94.226.174
RN = N/A
Call Leg ID = 62a572d30bf8e7946411133a4957ba4a@<our-server>
Media IP:UDP = <our server>:16628
Switched IP:UDP = 69.94.226.174:20176
Codec List = G.729,G.711u_64k,G.711a_64k,GSM,RFC 2833


Any ideas guys? As much as possible, I would like to avoid reinstalling the server.

Thanks in advance!

[DomeDan]

Call one of the phone numbers that was blank/empty, if someone answers then ask them what they experience when they were called.

[williamconley]

Concur.

Also try another provider for testing.

Also look at the asterisk cli and even asterisk sip debug cli and see if you can find anything. but definitely start by calling one of the numbers (or several, see if you can spot a trend) and then changing carriers for a while to see if that has any effect. Always have more than one carrier available (even if one is expensive and only used for testing for 10 minutes here and there).

[baka-na]

Hi Will and Dome,

Thanks for the inputs. Although I tried calling some of those that were empty the last time I didn't get the chance to ask them what they experienced during those empty calls.
Also we tried switching to other providers and it seems to exhibit the same scenario as well. We'll keep monitoring the logs to see if there's something in it.

again, thank you very much.