krishna chaitanya
04/14/2026, 10:45 AMChiranjeet Mishra
04/14/2026, 12:53 PM019d8b82-195f-7000-8c02-95bdf311606e — here's exactly what happened and how to fix it.
what happened
your assistant is configured to detect voicemail using vapi's audio-based detection. when the call connected, vapi started listening to the audio and passed it to the voicemail classifier at two points:
• ~7 seconds into the call: classifier ran, did not detect voicemail
• ~12 seconds into the call: classifier ran again, still did not detect voicemail
because neither check came back as "voicemail", the voicemailMessage was never played and the call was never handed off to voicemail handling. the assistant just kept waiting.
at ~27 seconds, the call hit your silence timeout and ended with silence-timed-out. no voicemail was left.
how to fix it
you need to tune your voicemailDetection config to sample earlier and more frequently so the classifier gets more chances to catch the greeting.
here's your current config and a recommended update:
current:
"voicemailDetection": {
"provider": "vapi",
"type": "audio",
"backoffPlan": {
"startAtSeconds": 5,
"frequencySeconds": 5
},
"beepMaxAwaitSeconds": 30
}
recommended:
"voicemailDetection": {
"provider": "vapi",
"type": "audio",
"backoffPlan": {
"startAtSeconds": 2,
"frequencySeconds": 2
},
"beepMaxAwaitSeconds": 30
}
if you're still seeing silence-timed-out after the config update, let me know and we can look at whether the specific carrier/number has unusual voicemail behavior.krishna chaitanya
04/15/2026, 4:48 AMkrishna chaitanya
04/15/2026, 12:18 PMChiranjeet Mishra
04/16/2026, 3:10 PM