Turn taking
How patiently the agent waits before deciding the caller has finished, and how readily it stops talking when the caller cuts in.
Turn taking is the difference between an agent that talks over people and one that leaves awkward gaps. The controls sit on the Hearing page.
The defaults are tuned for a typical phone call. Change one control at a time and listen to a real call after each change.
Turn-start detection
Which signals open a caller's turn. Applies on every engine:
| Option | Behaviour |
|---|---|
| Standard | Recommended. Picks up quiet or trailing openers. |
| Minimal | Opens a turn only once enough words have arrived. |
| Fast barge-in | Lets callers cut in sooner. |
Fast barge-in works well on a handset but is risky on a speakerphone, where the agent's own voice loops back through the caller's mic and can be mistaken for the caller starting to speak.
The waiting controls
- Smart interruption filter -- holds off replying when the caller pauses mid-thought (e.g. reading a reference number in fragments). It waits for the completed turn instead of answering the first half.
- Response sensitivity -- trades certainty against speed. Higher values wait longer before replying, which suits quiet or hesitant speech.
- Quick-response threshold -- replies sooner in fast back-and-forth, lowering latency at the cost of the occasional early start.
- Short pause timeout -- how long silence after a brief turn lasts before the agent responds (0.5 to 5 seconds).
- Long pause timeout -- how long a silent caller is left before the agent checks in (15 to 30 seconds). Fifteen seconds is a floor, not a suggestion.
Turn-native engines
On Flux and Ink 2 the engine owns turn boundaries, so several controls are not the platform's to set. Hearing lists which engine decides what. Controls the engine owns are disabled in the UI with the reason shown.
- The smart interruption filter and the short pause timeout are decided by the engine.
- Response sensitivity and the quick-response threshold stay live but map onto the engine's own thresholds. The card shows the value being sent so you can compare it against a call log.
- Turn-start detection and the long pause timeout apply on every engine.
Ink 2 preset
Ink 2 adds a turn-taking preset covering the two engine controls no slider reaches. The platform default replies faster than the vendor's profiles. The alternatives are Balanced (vendor default), Responsive, and Patient. Moving a slider afterwards overrides just that one value.