FAQ
Billing
Intelligent outbound robot billing
The intelligent outbound robot offers two billing models: monthly subscription by concurrency and pay-as-you-go. For details, see Product Pricing. You must also purchase phone numbers, which are billed separately by the provider.
Under the pay-as-you-go model, fees are deducted hourly from your account balance, and bills are issued monthly. Ensure your Alibaba Cloud account has a sufficient balance.
Number fees
For third-party number pricing, see Services and Fees from Partners.
Choosing a billing model
Monthly subscription by concurrency: This model is ideal for users with stable and predictable call volumes. You can scale your concurrency up or down at any time.
Pay-as-you-go: This model is suited for users with fluctuating call volumes. The pay-as-you-go model has a default limit of 20 concurrent lines. You cannot adjust this limit yourself, but you can submit a ticket to request a temporary capacity increase.
Concurrency is the number of outbound calls the robot can handle simultaneously. Think of the robot as a phone and concurrency as the number of people making simultaneous calls.
Estimating concurrency and costs
Concurrency calculation formula
For example, consider a campaign with 60,000 total calls, a 50% call loss rate, an average call duration of 2 minutes, a daily calling window of 8 hours, and a completion timeframe of 2 days.
60,000 (total calls) * 1.5 (1 + 50% loss rate) * 2 (minutes per call) / 480 (daily minutes) / 2 (days to complete) = 187.5. The required concurrency is 188 (rounded up from 187.5).
To quickly estimate the required concurrency and corresponding costs, you can use the Prepaid Concurrency Calculator.
Insufficient pay-as-you-go concurrency
If you need to make a large volume of calls, notify your operations support specialist at least 1 to 2 days in advance. Provide the following details: total call volume, average call duration, the campaign timeframe, and the specific start and end times for dialing. The specialist will then arrange a temporary capacity increase.
There are no extra charges for a temporary concurrency increase under the pay-as-you-go model. However, this increase is only available for a limited period.
Trial availability
No. The intelligent outbound robot is a production-ready service. To test it, you can activate the pay-as-you-go model. The console provides a softphone test feature that lets you make test calls to debug your dialog flow after designing a script.
Charges after overdue payment suspension
Note: If your account balance is low, initiating a new outbound task that costs more than your remaining balance will result in an overdue payment.
How service suspension for overdue payments works:
Service suspension is not instantaneous due to billing and task scheduling cycles. If a payment becomes overdue, the system may still complete tasks that are already running or queued, incurring further charges. Tasks started before the account became overdue will stop after the current scheduling cycle. No new charges will be generated in the next billing cycle.
Numbers and Lines
Applying for phone numbers
To apply for numbers, see the Line Application Process.
Number application review time
After you submit the application, the review usually takes 1 to 2 business days.
We recommend providing your DingTalk ID as the contact method. After your application is approved, an operations support specialist will add you on DingTalk.
Connecting your own numbers
First, confirm that your numbers support the SIP trunk protocol. If they do, you must set up your own trunk and provide a public IP address, port, and caller ID number. For example: 192.168.100.123:5060:123456.
There are two methods for SIP trunking. The first is internet-based SIP trunking, which requires port mapping for outbound calls. The second involves provisioning a physical trunk line to a data center and connecting it to a voice gateway. If the gateway is not in the same network environment as our service, you must also provision a leased line for the SIP connection. The intelligent outbound robot uses the first method: internet-based SIP trunking.
RAM user application errors
If a RAM user receives an error when applying for a number, the Alibaba Cloud account owner must grant the AliyunCCCFullAccess permission to that RAM user. For instructions, see RAM User Creation and Authorization.
Other questions
Script review time
Script review typically takes one business day. For urgent requests, contact your operations support specialist or join DingTalk group 165135014770 and ask an administrator for an expedited review.
Integration support
Yes. For details, see the Quick Integration documentation.
SMS and agent transfer support
Transferring to an agent
Activate
Cloud Call Centerand configure the correspondingskill group. You can then transfer the outbound call to an agent in the associatedCloud Call Centerskill group.If you have your own call center, you must connect its numbers to the intelligent outbound robot via a
SIP trunk.
Sending short messages
You must activate the Alibaba Cloud Short Message Service. This lets you associate the API service through the outbound dialog flow (script configuration).