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The Experience settings govern the real-time conversational behavior and operational boundaries of your voice AI agent. While Persona dictates what your agent says, Experience defines how human and responsive the conversation feels — from ambient office background sounds and conversational filler words to idle pulse checks and maximum duration cutoffs.

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Video Walkthrough

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Core Experience Dimensions

Configuring agent experience centers around two critical areas:
  1. Conversational Feel (Audio Realism & Pacing)
    • Background Noise: Realistic ambient overlays (office, call center, cafe) with volume calibration and preview.
    • Filler Words: Natural human speech markers (“um”, “uh”, “you know”, “got it”) to avoid robotic silence during reasoning.
    • Eagerness to Speak: Responsiveness dial balancing rapid conversational turn-taking with token economy.
  2. Call Operations & Inactivity Management
    • Idle Pulse Checks: Checking in on quiet callers after an initial silence gap (e.g., 15 seconds) before gracefully hanging up.
    • Max Call Duration: Safety ceiling limiting call length, featuring automated countdown warnings or human agent escalation.
    • Voicemail & Answering Machine Detection: Determining whether to leave a custom recorded message or disconnect immediately.

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Step-by-Step Configuration

1

Navigate to Experience Settings

In the dashboard, open Agent Config → select your agent → navigate to the Experience tab.
2

Set Ambient Background Noise

Add subtle ambient noise so the agent doesn’t sound like it is in a vacuum:
  • Toggle Background Noise: Enable the ambient overlay.
  • Sound Presets: Choose a preset such as Office, Call Center, or Quiet Room.
  • Volume Calibration: Set the volume slider (typically 10%–25%) and use the Preview button to test how the voice blends with the room tone.
3

Configure Filler Words & Natural Flow

Make the agent sound spontaneous during live turn-taking:
  • Enable Filler Words: Select how frequently the agent uses hesitation sounds.
  • Custom Word List: Customize the preferred conversational fillers (e.g., ["sure", "let me see", "um", "alright"]).
4

Balance Eagerness to Speak

Select how quickly the agent begins answering once the caller finishes speaking:
  • Fast: Minimizes turn-taking latency for snappy, fast-paced dialog. Uses more speculative tokens.
  • Balanced (Recommended): Gives natural cadence, allowing callers to pause briefly without being interrupted.
  • Slow: Patiently waits for callers who speak deliberately or pause frequently.
5

Configure Idle Behavior & Pulse Checks

Handle moments when a caller goes quiet or puts the call on hold:
  • Pulse Check: If no speech is detected after 15 seconds, the agent plays a friendly prompt (e.g. “Are you still there?” or “Did I lose you?”).
  • Auto Hang-up: If silence continues for an additional 20 seconds, the agent plays a closing message and ends the call.
6

Set Max Call Duration & Escalation

Protect your telephony budget and handle lengthy conversations:
  • Set the Maximum Duration limit (e.g., 15 or 30 minutes).
  • Provide a warning message 15 seconds before the hard stop.
  • Choose whether to terminate the call or trigger a Human Transfer to an operator.

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Troubleshooting

Lower the background noise volume slider to between 10% and 15%. Ambient noise should sit softly in the background to mask dead air without competing with vocal clarity.
Adjust your Eagerness to Speak setting to Balanced or Slow, and increase the silence threshold by 200–400ms in your Persona settings.
Increase the idle_call_hangup_timeout setting under Idle Conversation Settings to 45–60 seconds, or disable end_conversation_on_idle for support-oriented workflows where customers frequently look up account details.
No. Unlike Knowledge Bases, Experience settings update instantaneously on all subsequent calls without any re-indexing delay.

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Next Step

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