ambitious-aqua•3mo ago
URGENT: Production Down - Dynamic Variables Speaking Literal Syntax to Customers
Dear Vapi.ai Support Team,
I am writing to report a CRITICAL PRODUCTION ISSUE that is making our AI voice agents completely unusable for customer-facing calls.
ISSUE SUMMARY: Our AI assistants are literally speaking variable syntax like "{{name}}" to customers instead of processing dynamic variables when values are null/undefined.
ORGANIZATION DETAILS:
Org ID: 9e2fba01-3a3e-44b6-b51d-da0bf706f586
Call ID (Example): 1e66d015-d64d-4fce-8478-25fd7384eeda
ACTUAL CUSTOMER CONVERSATION:
AI: "Hi {{name}}, thank you for calling Light Lounge Holland my name is happy. How may I help you?"
Customer: [responds]
AI: "Perfect, thank you for confirming! I have your name as {{name}}. Is that correct?"
Customer: "What do you have my name as?"This is happening to LIVE CUSTOMERS calling our business.
TECHNICAL DETAILS:
No changes were made to our system - this worked correctly before
Issue occurs when dynamic variables ({{name}}, {{email}}, {{phone}}) are null/undefined
Variables are passed correctly in variable_values during assistant requests
System prompt clearly handles null values, but variables aren't being processed at all
BUSINESS IMPACT:
PRODUCTION DOWN: Cannot use AI for customer calls
CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE: Extremely unprofessional interactions
REVENUE LOSS: Customers hanging up due to broken AI experience
BRAND DAMAGE: Makes our AI system appear completely broken
EXPECTED BEHAVIOR: When {{name}} is null, the AI should either:
Skip the variable entirely
Follow system prompt instructions for missing data
NOT speak literal "{{name}}" to customers
IMMEDIATE ACTION REQUIRED: This is a production-critical bug affecting live customer interactions. We need:
Immediate hotfix or workaround
Root cause analysis of variable processing changes
ETA for permanent resolution
URGENCY: This issue is preventing us from serving customers and causing significant business disruption. Please escalate this ticket to your highest priority level.
15 Replies
fascinating-indigo•3mo ago
Go to your call logs and please screen shot the messages list that show the AI talking to the Human
It sounds like your variables are not passing through to your system instructions, can you please share how you're passing this data to your agent?
ambitious-aquaOP•3mo ago
This is what it says as first message while it was all working good before and I never faced this issue before. I am passing instruction to the agent via webhook for assistatnt request and it was all working till now. But out of blue, we started to face this issue!
ambitious-aquaOP•3mo ago
What else do you want. Its very urgent and its happening in live agents!!!
fascinating-indigo•3mo ago
Please go to messages list 2 tabs over beside call cost
it appears that your variables are empty
meaning, {{name}} does not exist
how are you passing the name to the agent
is this triggered by a webhook from gohighlevel, facebook?
Nevermind, this is an incoming call, why does this have a name variable in the first place?
Your first message should not include the name variable unless you know who the caller is for inbound calls
@Ahmad Raza
ambitious-aquaOP•3mo ago
Bro are you from VAPI team? @SlaviSavanovic
fascinating-indigo•3mo ago
Nah just been in this channel and using vapi for like 18 months
ambitious-aquaOP•3mo ago
Ahh gotcha, we use variables in the incoming call as well and it was working till now but suddenyl we faced this issue. So it is clearly an issue from vapi side becasue same configuration were working all perfectly
fascinating-indigo•3mo ago
How are you passing a variable for incoming calls?
I'm telling you, that's the problem. I don't know how you were able to do that before, but if i call your agent, how is it going to know my name is "Slavi" that data is supposed to come from an external source
aka webhook
@Ahmad Raza
ambitious-aquaOP•3mo ago
yeah i am attaching that data before the call after getting that from my CRM
And even if let's say name does not exist then varaible should be empty and do not say out loud anything
Thats the whole purpose of dynamic variables!
Switch your update channel to weekly in your org settings and let us know if the issue persists.
other-emerald•3mo ago
yes this is happening to me as well, clients are not happy
ambitious-aquaOP•3mo ago
switching to weekly doesnt help. it doesnt even get saved. when i reload the page it gets back to daily updates
I will keep you updated on the solution
fascinating-indigo•3mo ago
if you're using the API, why don't you attatch a first message at the start of the call? If the name doesn't exist, remove the variable
in fact if you use the api to attatch a dynamic first message, then you don't need to use the variable at all. Just have their name in the first message
ambitious-aquaOP•3mo ago
Hi @SlaviSavanovic ! Thanks for your suggestion but this is fixed by vapi team! @Thebrods This is fixed mate.
Glad the issue was resolved. Please reach out to us if you have any other questions regarding this issue