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Three settings in the Call Settings block on your agent’s Configure tab decide the rhythm of every call: Patience Level, Check if user is online, and Hangup call on user silence. They are the difference between an agent that interrupts people and one that leaves dead air.

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Before you start

  • An agent. See Create your first agent.
  • Five minutes, and a phone. These settings can only be judged by hearing them.
  • You will be working in the Call Settings block of your agent’s Configure tab.

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Steps

1

Open Call Settings

Open your agent, go to Configure, and scroll to Call Settings. Patience Level is the first setting in the block.
2

Set the patience level

Pick how long your agent waits after the caller stops speaking before it replies.
  • Low. About 1 second. Snappy, good for quick confirmations, and it will cut people off when they pause to think.
  • Medium. About 3 seconds. The right default for most businesses.
  • High. About 5 seconds. Fewer interruptions and more crosstalk avoided, at the cost of feeling slow.
3

Decide whether it nudges a quiet caller

Turn on Check if user is online if you want your agent to prompt a caller who has gone quiet. Set the idle time, from 5 to 60 seconds, and write the line it should say. The line is required when the setting is on.Keep it short and human. “Are you still there?” is enough.
4

Set when it gives up

Hangup call on user silence is how long your agent waits in silence before ending the call, from 10 to 120 seconds. Set it longer than your idle nudge, so the caller gets prompted before the line goes down.
5

Save and call it

Save, then call your agent and deliberately pause mid sentence. See Test your agent yourself.

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You will know it worked when

You call your agent, pause in the middle of a sentence, and it waits for you to finish instead of jumping in. Then you go silent, get nudged once, stay silent, and the call ends cleanly rather than hanging open.

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How to choose the numbers

Set the two silence settings together, not separately. The nudge has to come before the hang up or it never fires. A safe starting point for most businesses: Adjust from there:
  • Callers say it interrupts them. Move Patience Level up one step.
  • Callers say it is slow to answer. Move Patience Level down one step, and expect a few more interruptions in exchange.
  • Calls sit open with nobody on them. Lower Hangup call on user silence.
  • Callers get cut off while looking something up. Raise it, and raise the idle nudge with it.

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What else you can do here

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If it did not work

It still interrupts on High patience. The caller is probably pausing longer than 5 seconds, which usually means they are reading something out. Ask your agent in its instructions to say it will wait, so the caller knows the line is still live. See Write what your agent says. It feels slow even on Low. Patience is only part of the delay. A long answer takes longer to start. Set Answer Length to Concise, and check Thinking effort in the Advanced tab, since higher effort means slower replies. See Choose your AI model. The idle nudge never fires. Either the setting is off, or the hang up time is shorter than the idle time so the call ends first. Make the hang up time the larger of the two. Cannot save Call Settings. If Check if user is online is on, the message is required. Fill it in and save again. Background noise makes it think the caller is talking. Turn on Advanced Noise Cancellation. See Sound quality and background noise.

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FAQ

Its patience level is too low, so it treats a natural pause as the end of a sentence. Open Configure, find Patience Level in Call Settings, and move it up a step. Medium waits about 3 seconds and High about 5.
About 1 second on Low, 3 seconds on Medium, and 5 seconds on High. Medium is the right default for most businesses.
With Check if user is online on, your agent prompts them after the idle time you set, using the line you wrote. If the silence continues past Hangup call on user silence, the call ends.
Lower Hangup call on user silence in Call Settings. It goes from 10 to 120 seconds. Keep it above your idle nudge so callers get prompted before the line drops.
Yes, and they can interrupt the greeting too, which is on by default. See Set your greeting.
A low patience level, or a genuinely quiet room where your voice drops below the level it listens for. Raise the patience level first, then turn on Advanced Noise Cancellation if the caller is somewhere noisy.
Yes. A call sitting in silence is still a connected call, which is a good reason not to set the hang up time to the maximum. See What counts towards my usage.