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Brilo does not give your agent a voicemail box. Inbound, that is the point: your agent answers and takes a message in conversation, which gets you a name, a number, and what the caller wanted rather than a recording somebody has to listen to. Outbound, your agent recognises when it has reached somebody else’s voicemail and can leave a message.

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Inbound: a message instead of a voicemail

When somebody rings your number, your agent picks up. If it cannot help, it takes the details you told it to collect and the whole call is written up: a transcript, a summary, and the details your agent pulled out. That is better than a voicemail box in three ways. The caller gets a conversation rather than a beep. You get structured details rather than a recording. And nothing sits unheard, because the message is on the call record the moment the call ends. What to write in your instructions:
See Write what your agent says.

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Getting messages to your team

The message is on the call record, but nobody wants to check a dashboard. Send it where your team already works:
  • Text or email it to yourself as the call ends. See Send a text or email.
  • Write it into your CRM as a note or a task. See Update your CRM.
  • Have it emailed as part of a scheduled report if a daily digest is enough.

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Outbound: when your agent reaches a voicemail

On a campaign or a callback, your agent works out that it has reached a voicemail rather than a person. What happens next is a setting rather than a matter of instructions. Open your agent, go to Configure, and find Voicemail Behavior in the Call Settings block.
1

Turn on Voicemail Behavior

Switch it on. Two choices appear.
2

Choose Hang up or Leave a message

Hang up ends the call the moment a voicemail is detected. Use it for reminders that only work as a conversation, and for anything where a recorded message would confuse people.Leave a message speaks a message you write, then ends the call. Use it for confirmations and reminders that still do their job as a one way message.
3

Write the message, if you chose to leave one

The message box is required once you pick Leave a message, and the block will not save without it. Keep it to two sentences: who is calling, why, and what to do next.You can drop contact details into the text as variables, written in double curly braces, so each person hears their own name or appointment time rather than a generic line.
4

Save and test it

Save, then run a test call to a phone you can let ring through to voicemail, and listen to what lands.
Two things follow from either choice. A call answered by voicemail uses call minutes, because the line answered. And a voicemail is not a failed call, so it will not be retried unless your sequence includes a later step. See What counts towards my usage and Outbound follow up.

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What to put in a voicemail message

  • Your business name first. Nobody returns a call from a message that never says who rang.
  • The reason, in one clause. “About your appointment on Thursday.”
  • One instruction. A number to call back, or a link you have texted them. Not both.
  • No questions. There is nobody there to answer them.
Leave out anything time sensitive that will have passed by the time the message is heard, because people listen to voicemail hours later.

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Getting past mobile call screening

A screened mobile is not the same as a voicemail. Newer iPhones and Android handsets ask who is calling before they ring at all, and that is a separate setting on the same tab. See Get past call screening on mobiles.

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If your callers still reach your old voicemail

That means the call is not getting to Brilo at all. Your phone provider is answering it first, usually because forwarding is set to go to voicemail after a number of rings, or was never changed. See Use your existing number.

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FAQ

Open your agent, go to Configure, and find Voicemail Behavior in Call Settings. Set it to Hang up and your agent ends the call as soon as it detects a voicemail instead of speaking to it.
Yes. Turn on Voicemail Behavior, choose Leave a message, and write the message. The message field is required, so the setting will not save until you fill it in.
There is no voicemail box, and there does not need to be. Your agent answers the call and takes a message in conversation, which produces a name, a number, and the reason for the call instead of a recording somebody has to sit through.
Onto the call record, with the transcript and summary, straight after the call. Have them texted or emailed to you, or written into your CRM, so nobody has to open the dashboard to find them.
Yes. Every call has a transcript and a summary, and the details your agent collected are pulled out separately, so a message is text you can read rather than audio you have to play.
Yes. On outbound calls it recognises a voicemail and can leave a short message, or hang up without one, depending on what your instructions say. Decide which before running a campaign.
Yes, because the line answered. This is worth knowing before a large campaign, since a good share of outbound calls reach voicemail. See What counts towards my usage.
Because the call never reaches Brilo. Your provider is answering first, usually forwarding to voicemail after a set number of rings. Change the forwarding at your provider, not in Brilo.
The message and the transcript come from the conversation rather than from the recording, so you keep the useful part. See Recordings, transcripts and retention.