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Limit Call Duration puts a hard ceiling on a single call, from 1 to 30 minutes. It exists for the calls that go wrong rather than the calls that go well: a caller who walks away, a line left open, an argument that will never resolve. You set it in the Call Settings block of the Configure tab.

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Before you start

  • An agent. See Create your first agent.
  • Two minutes.
  • A sense of how long your longest genuine call runs. Check a few recordings rather than guessing.
  • You will be working in the Call Settings block of your agent’s Configure tab.

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Steps

1

Find out how long your real calls take

Open your call history and look at your longest few calls that ended well. Your cap has to sit comfortably above that number, or you will cut off the calls you most wanted to keep.
2

Open Call Settings

Open your agent, go to Configure, and scroll to Call Settings. Limit Call Duration is near the bottom of the block.
3

Turn it on and set the cap

Switch it on, then set the maximum in minutes. The slider runs from 1 to 30.
4

Save and check a long call

Save. Then make a deliberately long test call and confirm it ends where you expect. See Test your agent yourself.

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You will know it worked when

A test call that runs past your cap ends on its own, and your ordinary calls are completely unaffected because they finish well inside it.

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How to pick the number

Take your longest successful call and add generous headroom. If your longest real booking call runs 4 minutes, a 10 minute cap is sensible and a 5 minute cap is a trap. Rough starting points: The point is to catch the outliers. If the cap is firing on calls that were going fine, it is set too low.

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What else you can do here

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If it did not work

Real calls are being cut off. The cap is too low. Raise it, and tell your agent in its instructions to offer a transfer or a call back when a call is dragging, so the caller is handed on rather than dropped. See Write what your agent says. The call ends with no warning to the caller. The cap ends the call, it does not announce it. If your calls sometimes run long, instruct your agent to offer a call back well before the cap. See Schedule a callback. Calls still run away with your minutes. Silence is the usual culprit, not length. Check Hangup call on user silence. See Pauses, silence and interruptions. The setting will not save. Check the rest of the Call Settings block. A message field left empty on Check if user is online or Voicemail Behavior blocks the save for the whole block.

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FAQ

Yes. Turn on Limit Call Duration in Call Settings on the Configure tab and set a cap between 1 and 30 minutes. The call ends when it reaches the cap.
The call ends. Your agent does not announce it first, so if your calls can legitimately run long, instruct your agent to offer a transfer or a call back before the cap is reached.
Take your longest successful call and add plenty of headroom. Around 10 minutes suits booking and enquiries, 15 for lead qualification, and 20 to 30 for detailed intake. The cap is there for outliers, not for normal calls.
A little, on the calls that would have run on pointlessly. Ending silent calls sooner usually saves more. See What counts towards my usage.
Yes. It is an agent setting, so every call that agent handles is capped, inbound and outbound.
No. This caps the length of one call. How many calls run simultaneously is separate. See How many calls at once.