We are facing an issue with scheduled calls from the VAPI voice agent. We created a campaign on December 30, 2025, and the call was scheduled for December 30, 2025 at 11:35 PM. However, we actually received the call at December 31, 12:03 AM, which is a delay of more than 20 minutes. Because of this delay, the call went to voicemail. Even after the scheduled time passed, the call status continued to show “Scheduled” in Outbound. This issue does not occur all the time. When we create a campaign scheduled between 9:00 AM and 8:00 PM IST, the calls are initiated within a few minutes. We are located in India. The user facing this issue is located in the Philippines and tried to run the campaign from there. The same user receives calls without any delay in some campaigns. We are using Phone.com as our call service application. Could you please help us understand: Why the call execution is delayed even though it is scheduled correctly?. How we can avoid such delays and ensure calls are executed close to the scheduled time?. Please provide the reason why this issue occurred, and suggest a possible solution as soon as possible. Call ID: 019b706f-d258-7bbb-8b34-b121a9a38190 Timestamp: Dec 31, 12:03 AM Issue: The call was scheduled for December 30, 2025 at 11:35 PM we actually received the call at December 31, 12:03 AM, which is a delay of more than 20 minutes. Expected: The call should be initiated at the exact scheduled time, or within an acceptable minimal tolerance (near real-time), without any significant delay. Browser: Chrome Version 136.0.7103.59 Screen Recording: attached https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/1456513901838729362/1456513902123679887/Screenshot_from_2026-01-02_10-21-05.png?ex=698030c6&is=697edf46&hm=e1bb4054d45237c2a5b69505a4a6ac1d4abffb6a19abb8216943b4cab3413043& https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/1456513901838729362/1456513902723600575/Screenshot_from_2026-01-02_10-20-11.png?ex=698030c7&is=697edf47&hm=2a3693b636c15227e3ea147f0ba9e23f3b08c639d4e362f9dec3157c70a719e8&

To reduce call initiation delays, check your Vapi organization's concurrency limit and increase it if needed. You can do this in the Vapi Dashboard under billing settings. If your concurrency is too low, scheduled calls may be queued and delayed until slots are available. Example:

# Set MAX_CONCURRENCY in your environment
MAX_CONCURRENCY=10

This helps ensure calls are triggered closer to the scheduled time. For more details, see the [Vapi concurrency documentation](https://docs.vapi.ai/outbound-campaigns/overview). Source: - [Outbound campaigns overview](https://docs.vapi.ai/outbound-campaigns/overview)

Our concurrency limit is 10. In this campaign only one call was scheduled, so we did not reach the limit. It appears that concurrency is not the issue. Could you please check further?

Scheduled calls might be delayed if the call is scheduled during a peak time. If you are experiencing issues with delayed scheduled calls, use this workaround:

The suggested workaround is applicable when a campaign contains a large number of leads. However, in our case, this campaign has only two scheduled calls, so this workaround does not resolve the issue. Could you please let us know if there is any other solution to fix the call delay issue when a campaign runs during peak time?

If the campaign only has two calls, we suggest using the outbound call scheduler instead. It can be found on the phone numbers page on the dashboard. Another workaround for this is creating custom code to execute an instant call via the API, triggering when the current time = desired scheduled call time