Write the follow-up sequence in plain English
A text box, in sentences. There is no retry-after field and no max-attempts counter, because nobody briefs a new agent that way.
Most diallers ask you to fill in retry_after_hours and
max_attempts. Those fields describe a machine. Nobody briefing a new sales hire
has ever said "set your retry interval to four hours" — they say "if nobody answers, try
again after lunch, and if you still cannot reach them, send a WhatsApp."
So the input here is a text box and you write sentences. Six lines ship as the default and you edit them.
The sentence people forget is the last one: when to stop. A sequence with no stopping condition is how somebody gets called eleven times.
Steps
Find the follow-up box on the campaign
Six default lines are already there. Editing them is easier than starting from a blank box, and they show you the expected level of detail.
Write it the way you would brief a new agent
"Call them. If they pick up and we talk, we're done. If nobody answers, wait four hours and try again. Still nothing, send a WhatsApp that evening and make one last attempt the next morning. After that, stop."
That is the actual input. It reads like a briefing because it is one.
Say when to stop, explicitly
The most important sentence in the box, and the one most often missing. "After that, stop" is not implied.
Use uneven intervals
"Wait four hours" reaches somebody at a different time of day than the first attempt. "Wait one day" rings them at the moment they were busy yesterday, which is why day-interval sequences underperform.
Name a channel switch if you want one
"Send a WhatsApp" is a valid instruction. A sequence mixing a call and a message almost always beats one that only calls — people who will not answer an unknown number will often read a message.
Read it aloud before you save
If it does not make sense read out to a colleague, it will not make sense to the automation either. That is a genuinely reliable test.
Check it against the calling hours
Calling hours still bound everything. "Try again in four hours" will not dial at 11pm on a line restricted to daytime — it waits.
Check it worked
After the campaign has been running a day, open a contact who did not answer the first time and read their activity feed. The attempts should look like the sequence you wrote. If they do not, the wording was ambiguous — rewrite it more plainly.
The parts people get wrong
- There are no retry-after or max-attempt fields. The automation derives the logic from your sentences.
- Sales managers do not think in
retry_after_hours— and the ones who do can say "four hours" just as easily. - Calling hours are the hard boundary. A sequence can never dial outside them, however it is worded.