What makes an AI agent sound human on the phone
It is not the voice. It is turn-taking, interruptions, and knowing what day it is.
By Tayoga Wasneski
We get asked about voices constantly, and voices matter. But when we listen to calls that felt robotic, the voice is rarely the problem. Three things are.
Turn-taking
A person starts answering before you have quite finished. Our agent streams speech recognition and starts generating its reply on partial transcripts, so the gap after the caller stops talking is a few hundred milliseconds, not two seconds.
Interruptions
When the caller talks over the agent, the agent stops. Immediately. The half-spoken sentence is dropped from the conversation so the model does not think it said something the caller never heard.
Context
"What day is it today?" and "how's the weather over there?" are small-talk questions real callers ask. The agent is told the date and can look up the weather, so it answers like a colleague would instead of dodging.
Premium voices add emotion and emphasis on top of all that, and they are worth it for outbound sales. But get the three things above right first.
