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Run an outbound campaign

A campaign calls a list of people for you, inside the hours you choose. Use it for reminders, follow ups, surveys or bookings. Every call is recorded and summarised, and you can watch it live.

You will need: a tested voice agent with a number (see Write your agent, the Phone Number section), and credits in your balance.

1. Name it and pick the agent

Section titled “1. Name it and pick the agent”

Open Outbound > Campaigns and press New Campaign. On Campaign Details:

  • Campaign Name and Campaign Description: for your team, for example “Vaccination reminders”.
  • Select Agent: the agent that makes the calls.
  • Dialing Number: the number the calls come from. The list shows the numbers this agent may call from. This choice is for this campaign only.
  • Target Country: the country of the people you are calling.

2. Set the dates and calling hours

Section titled “2. Set the dates and calling hours”

Under Campaign Duration, pick Start Date - End Date, choose the Timezone of the people you call, and set the calling hours with From and To (an hour and AM or PM each). Calls only go out inside these hours. Press Save & Next.

3. Upload the people to call

Section titled “3. Upload the people to call”

On Call Settings, press Download template. Fill it in Excel or Google Sheets: one row per person, with phoneNumber (with the country code) and participantName. If your agent has custom variables, the template has a column for each one too. Save it as CSV or XLSX and upload it under Select File.

Then set:

Field What it means
Retry How many times a call is tried again if it does not get through (0 to 10).
Cool Down Minutes to wait before a retry.
Max Call Duration The longest a call may last, in minutes.
Inactive Duration Seconds of silence before the call is ended.

Press Create.

4. Choose what to save from each call, then schedule

Section titled “4. Choose what to save from each call, then schedule”

On Data Extraction (optional), turn on Post-Campaign Data Extraction with Enable to save answers from each call. Press Add Extraction Field for each answer you want, and give it a Display Label, a Field Type (Text Answer, Yes / No, Number or Multiple Choice) and a Description of what to listen for. Press Save Configuration.

Press Schedule Campaign. If it is inside your calling hours, calls start straight away. Otherwise they start when your hours begin.

5. Watch it run

Section titled “5. Watch it run”

Open the campaign from Outbound > Campaigns. Live monitoring updates the counts every 10 seconds: Total Contacts, Completed, Successful, No Answer and more, with every contact and their call below.

  • Pause campaign stops new calls. Resume campaign carries on.
  • Complete campaign ends it for good. This cannot be undone.
  • When a campaign has finished, Follow up calls the people worth calling again.

Common failures

Section titled “Common failures”
"Choose a dialing number for this campaign." or the Dialing Number list is empty

The agent has no number it may call from. Give the agent a number in its Phone Number section, or allow it to call from a number under Numbers > My Numbers (the Outbound column). Then pick the agent again.

The upload says "Unsupported file extension. Please use CSV or XLSX." or "Could not read this file."

Save the list again as .xlsx or CSV from Excel or Google Sheets, keep the template’s column names, and upload it again.

The upload shows "Validation Failed"

Some phone numbers in the file are not valid. Check that every number is complete and has its country code, fix the rows listed, and upload again.

The times will not save: "End time must be after start time for the same day."

To must be later than From. Check the AM and PM on both.

Many calls show Busy, No Answer or Voicemail

That is normal: those are the people who did not pick up. Set Retry and Cool Down to try them again later. If no calls go out at all, message us.

Next steps

Section titled “Next steps”