AI calls for failed deliveries (NDR)

Why does an NDR call suit an agent?

A failed delivery gives you a short window. The parcel sits at the hub, the courier allows only so many reattempts, and every day without an answer moves it closer to coming back to you. The call that rescues it is usually simple. You need to know what really happened, when the customer will be in, and how the delivery person can find the place.

NDRs also arrive in uneven heaps. A rainy day or a holiday can turn ten into three hundred, and the calls need to happen that day. An agent can work through the heap at whatever pace your concurrency allows, in Hindi or English, without anybody being pulled off support.

This call branches more than most. The customer may be away, may have refused the parcel, may want to cancel, or may say the courier never came. A node-based agent handles that better than one long prompt. Each step has its own instructions (confirm the customer, hear what happened, pick a day, take a landmark, close), and the model moves between them when the caller’s answer meets a step’s condition. You can draft the flow in Agent Studio from a description of how your team handles NDRs, or from transcripts of a few good calls, then edit it.

How do you set it up?

1. In Agent Studio, choose Create agent, then Node-based, and describe the call. Mention the three outcomes you want and the values each step should record.
2. Check every step’s prompt. The pick-a-day step should offer only {{reattempt_options}}, the days your courier can actually do. The close step should repeat the decision back to the customer.
3. Add a pre-call tool that reads the shipment’s latest status from your system, and a skip_call rule so delivered or already-returned shipments are never called.
4. Test it in the browser as three customers: one who was out, one who disputes the attempt, one who wants to cancel.
5. Create an always-on campaign through the API with your calling hours and two or three retries a short gap apart. Your NDR feed adds each shipment with POST /v2/campaigns/{id}/contacts, with the AWB number as metadata.
6. Point the campaign’s webhook at your backend. For a node-based agent, call.processed carries data.call.flow, with the values extracted at each step and the steps the call visited. Your handler, or a post-call HTTP tool, passes the decision to the courier.

Read flow.nodes_visited across a few hundred calls. If many calls end at the hear-what-happened step, the problem is usually in what the agent says there, and you can see it in the transcripts.

What should your team still handle?

Disputes about the courier are yours to raise with the courier, and the courier_reason_disputed flag gives you the list with transcripts as evidence. High-value parcels, a second NDR on the same order, and customers asking for a refund belong with your support team. The agent can’t transfer calls today, so it should note the request and tell the customer someone will call.

What should you check before you call?

TRAI’s Third Amendment to the TCCCPR, notified on 18 September 2026, describes a service call as one giving a customer information about a product or service they bought, and it names information about delivery of goods. It says these calls are not promotional and don’t need explicit consent. An NDR call fits that description as long as it stays about the delivery; adding an offer changes what kind of call it is.

The same amendment asks senders to declare calls placed by software, including artificial-voice calls, to their originating telecom provider in advance with the numbers they’ll use, and treats undeclared ones as unsolicited. Parts of it take effect in stages after publication, so confirm the timing with your provider. Calling hours are your choice inside the campaign; check TRAI’s current rules and your consent records before you set them. We don’t scrub your list against the national DND register, so do that before upload.

What does an NDR call cost?

On T1 a connected minute costs ₹1 with a ₹1,00,000 monthly commitment, plus ₹0.30 for Mirai phone calling and ₹0.20 for call insights if you switch them on. On T5 it’s ₹5 a minute, pay as you go, with both included. Prices exclude GST. Answered calls are billed and unanswered ones aren’t. The cost block assumes about 100 seconds of connected time, an estimate for a call with one reattempt day and a landmark; a quick “कल भेज दो” is shorter. The comparison that matters is one answered call against the two-way shipping and repacking of a parcel that comes back. See Pricing for the plans, or put your NDR volume into the cost calculator.