Outbound voicemail detection: can't fix it without breaking live answers (conversation-flow agent)

Hoping someone from the team (or anyone who’s solved this) can point me the right way.

**Setup:** conversation-flow agent, outbound calls via an imported Twilio number. `voicemail_option` is configured with a `static_text` message.

**The core problem:** on calls that hit a voicemail, the agent talks *over* the greeting and runs its normal opener into the machine, then either leaves a rambling message or goes silent until the timeout (dead air). Detection often just doesn’t fire.

- Example failing call: `call_a8349e7a1b5765cc3d08241ddc0` (added a `detection_prompt`, still ran live, ended `inactivity`)

**What actually made detection fire:** I restructured the flow so the agent’s first utterance is very short (“Hey [name]!”) before the main opener, giving the detector a listening window. That worked reliably — `voicemail_reached`, clean message left:

- `call_6afc9195f06e793adef8998fba3`

- `call_1f862ae31d1606d5c2669285e59`

**But that created two new problems:**

1. **Message clipped before the beep** — when detection fires, the agent starts the static message ~5–6s *before* the beep, so the front of the message gets recorded over. Prepending filler only works for one greeting length.

2. **Live-answer regression** — the short utterance + pause needed for detection creates an awkward gap when a real person answers. A live test caller hung up after ~7s (`call_17f69961cbc7a365a3c49bdd187`).

So I’m stuck choosing between clean voicemails and smooth live answers, which can’t be right.

**Questions:**

1. Is there a way to run voicemail detection **in parallel** while the agent speaks its normal opener continuously — detecting the machine *without* forcing a short first utterance/pause that hurts live answers?

2. Is there a setting to make the agent **wait for the beep** before leaving the static message, so it isn’t clipped?

3. Is there a **detection timing/window** setting to tune for carriers with long greetings (“Your call has been forwarded to voicemail… at the tone, please record your message”)?

4. Any account/agent-level setting for reliable outbound AMD I might be missing?

Goal: normal opener with no awkward pause on live answers, AND a clean, un-clipped message after the beep on voicemails. Thanks!

Hello @james.bronkhorst3 Thank you for the details. I’ve Reported this to our team for review.

Thank You