u/Lochana_Lithira

Hey everyone,

I'm working on an outbound AI voice agent and I'm trying to get better at detecting voicemails early. Every second we spend talking to a machine costs money, but I also don't want to hang up on real people.

What are you guys using for this?

What I'm using right now, all running at the start of the call while the opening clip plays:

• Keyword check: strong phrases like "leave a message" or "after the beep" end the call right away. Weak phrases like "not available" get sent to the LLM.
• LLM check: a small model reads the transcript and decides voicemail or human. It runs when the caller finishes a sentence or says 8+ words.
• Beep detector: listens to the raw audio for a steady beep tone, so it works even if the speech-to-text can't understand the greeting.

It works reasonably well, but I’m looking for a more reliable approach.

What are you guys using for voicemail detection?