A vendor’s drop-credit policy is the most honest thing on their website. It is the exact line where they tell you which calls they will stand behind — and which ones they expect you to eat.
I’ve been running final expense and life operations long enough to know that marketing copy is easy to polish. A “quality guarantee” is whatever the sales team wants it to mean. But a drop-credit SLA has to be operational — it either fires automatically, or it doesn’t. It either covers dead air, or it doesn’t. Reading it carefully will tell you more about a vendor than any pitch deck.
Why the drop-credit SLA is a vendor’s most revealing number
Every inbound call program has bad calls. Drops happen. Misroutes happen. Prospects hang up in the first few seconds before a word is spoken. What separates a serious vendor from a loose one is not whether bad calls occur — it is whether they have a written, enforceable policy for making you whole when they do.
A vague “quality guarantee” shifts the burden to you. You have to notice the bad call, document it, open a ticket, and wait. An explicit time-buffer policy shifts the burden back to the vendor. It says: if this call doesn’t meet the minimum standard, the credit happens without you doing anything.
That difference compounds across hundreds of calls a month. Agents running high volume cannot manually chase credits for every two-second drop. The policy has to be automatic, or most of those bad calls quietly become sunk cost.
What should count as a creditable call
A creditable call is one where the vendor failed to deliver what was promised — a live, eligible, engaged prospect. The categories below are the ones that matter and the ones a solid drop-credit policy will cover explicitly.
- Drop inside the time buffer — the call connected but disconnected before reaching a meaningful conversation threshold. Any call that drops inside a defined buffer (for example, 90 seconds) before a word is exchanged should be credited automatically.
- Dead air — the call connected and the prospect was present, but no speech was detected on their end. This is a signal-level or routing failure, not a genuine contact.
- Wrong state — the prospect is outside the states you have configured for your campaign. You filtered for a reason; a misrouted call should not cost you.
- Wrong age — the prospect does not meet the age qualification you specified. Final Expense programs run specific age brackets; a call outside them is out-of-scope.
- No spoken word — the call was bridged but no audible speech was detected from the prospect before the call ended. An unresponsive bridge is not a billable contact.
- Misroute — the call was delivered to an agent or queue it was not configured for. The routing error is on the vendor.
Why a time buffer beats a vague quality guarantee
A “quality guarantee” is a policy that cannot be automated. Quality is subjective. Someone has to assess each call, decide it meets the definition of bad, and approve the credit. That someone is usually the vendor’s team, and the incentive is to find reasons to deny.
A time buffer is objective. The call connected at timestamp X. It disconnected at timestamp Y. Y minus X is either inside the buffer or it isn’t. No judgment call, no ticket, no negotiation — the rule fires or it doesn’t. That is automatable in a way that “quality” never is.
Ninety seconds is a reasonable threshold because it is long enough to rule out accidental pickups and disconnects, and short enough to exclude calls where a real conversation started. A prospect who says three words and hangs up is different from a prospect who stayed on the line for two minutes — that distinction matters for billing.
The exact number is less important than the fact that the number exists and is enforced automatically. A vendor who commits to a specific buffer is making a testable promise. A vendor who says “we take quality seriously” is making no promise at all.
SLA comparison: weak policy vs audit-grade policy
The table below shows how common drop-credit scenarios play out across a vendor with a loose policy versus one with a written, enforceable SLA. Use it as a benchmark when reading your current vendor’s terms.
| Scenario | Weak vendor SLA | Audit-grade SLA |
|---|---|---|
| Drop under the buffer | Manual review, may or may not credit | Auto-credited — no ticket, no wait |
| Dead air | Often excluded or requires proof | Credited automatically |
| Wrong state / age | Dispute process; outcome uncertain | Credited automatically |
| No spoken word | Vendor may count as billable contact | Credited automatically |
| Dispute process | Open a ticket; wait days or weeks | Same business day resolution |
| Credit cap | Monthly cap; excess losses absorbed by buyer | No artificial cap on valid credits |
| Reporting | Month-end export, limited visibility | Live performance dashboard |
SLA terms vary by vendor. Always request the written policy before signing.
Red flags in a vendor’s drop-credit terms
If you are reading a vendor’s SLA and you see any of the following, treat it as a signal to ask harder questions — or walk.
- Manual-only dispute tickets — if every credit requires you to open a ticket, the friction is by design. Most agents on volume will give up on small credits before they add up.
- Month-end reconciliation — cash flow is real. A policy that makes you wait 30 days to recover bad-call costs is a vendor collecting interest on your money.
- Credit caps — a monthly ceiling on creditable calls punishes you for a bad month that was the vendor’s fault. It is also a signal that they expect a lot of bad calls.
- “All sales final” or similar language — some contracts explicitly disclaim any credit obligation. If it is in the terms, assume it will be enforced.
- Fuzzy definitions of “billable” — terms like “connected call” without a duration threshold can mean anything. If a call that lasts two seconds counts as billable, you will lose that argument every time.
- No SLA at all — a vendor who has not published an explicit drop-credit policy has not committed to anything. The absence of a policy is itself the policy.
The questions you ask before signing are covered in more depth in questions to ask your inbound call vendor and in the TCPA-compliant inbound calls audit guide. For a broader comparison of call sourcing models, see inbound calls vs shared leads.