How does AMD work?
Answering Machine Detection listens to a phone pickup and decides whether you're about to talk to a human or a voicemail. When it works well, it doubles your real talk time per hour.
It listens for about a second and a half.
When an outbound call connects, AMD does notconnect you to the line immediately. Instead, the system holds the audio for roughly 1–2 seconds and analyzes what comes through. Humans tend to answer with a quick "hello?" — usually under 1.5 seconds of audio, with a clear pause afterward waiting for a response.
Voicemail greetings sound different. They're longer, usually 4–15 seconds, run as a continuous monologue, and end with a beep. AMD looks at the duration of the initial speech, the pauses, the frequency profile, and (in modern systems) machine-learned signatures of common voicemail-greeting patterns. When the math says "machine," the call drops before you ever pick up.
The stuff people ask about AMD.
How accurate is AMD?
Modern AMD on a clean carrier path is around 90–95% accurate. The remaining 5–10% splits between two kinds of error: false positives (AMD thinks a human is a voicemail and drops the call you wanted) and false negatives (AMD thinks a voicemail is a human and connects you to the greeting).
False positives are the painful ones — you just missed a connect. False negatives are mildly annoying but survivable; you hang up and the queue advances.
Doesn't the "hello? ... hello?" delay annoy people?
Yes, sometimes. There's a noticeable beat between when the human says "hello" and when the agent comes on the line — that's AMD doing its work. On lower-quality carrier paths it can be 2+ seconds, which is enough to make people hang up.
On DialerSeat, AMD runs through Telnyx's native call detection, tuned for speed so the analysis window stays short. That's short enough that most humans wait, but it's never going to be zero. It's a trade-off.
How does DialerSeat's AMD work specifically?
We use Telnyx's native call-detection engine, built on top of their carrier-grade telephony infrastructure. It classifies every pickup as human, machine, or not_sure. Anything classified as machine drops server-side, silently and instantly, before your screen ever lights up — no disposition prompt, the dialer just moves on to the next lead. A not_sure result is treated the same as a human pickup, so a call never gets stuck waiting on an ambiguous read.
Every AMD result is stored on the call record — so you can audit AMD accuracy on your own campaigns later by pulling the analytics.
When does AMD actually fire on DialerSeat?
By default: progressive and predictive modes get AMD on automatically. Power and preview don't — in those modes you're expected to deal with voicemails yourself (and many agents prefer that because they want to leave a voicemail).
You can override the default per-campaign in campaign settings if you want AMD on for power mode or off for progressive.
What happens to calls that AMD drops?
They get logged with a disposition of NO_ANSWER_AMDand the queue advances to the next lead automatically. Your agent never sees them — that's the whole point.
The lead doesn't get permanently removed from your list — AMD-dropped calls are typically retried later based on your campaign's retry rules.
Can I see why a specific call was dropped?
Yes. Every call record includes the AMD result (which of the six outcomes triggered) along with timing info. Pull it up in the calls log in your dashboard or export it for analysis.
Are voicemail drops a separate feature?
Yes — different feature, related concept. AMD detectsvoicemails. Voicemail drops play a pre-recorded message intoa voicemail once detected. We support voicemail drops as an opt-in per-campaign setting. By default it's off because, well, it's an aggressive practice that doesn't suit every industry.
Is AMD compliant with TCPA / TSR?
AMD itself doesn't change your compliance picture. The compliance rules apply to the act of placing the call, not to whether you connect to a human or a machine afterward.
AMD is, however, what makes progressive modework as a higher-throughput alternative to power, without triggering the FTC's 3% abandon cap. See the compliance page for more.
Other explainers
Stop listening to voicemail greetings.
AMD filters out machines before they reach your headset. Run progressive or predictive on a noisy list and feel the difference. $35/week per seat.