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Glossary

Latency (in voice AI)

In voice AI, latency is the delay between a caller finishing what they say and the agent starting its reply. It adds up across every step: noticing that the caller has stopped, turning speech into text, deciding the answer, generating the voice and sending the audio over the phone network.

Where the delay comes from

A reply passes through several stages, and each one adds a little time:

  1. End of turn. The agent has to decide the caller has finished, not just paused for breath. Wait too long and the call drags; jump in too early and it cuts people off.
  2. Speech recognition. The caller's last words become text.
  3. Thinking. The language model reads the conversation and writes the reply. Long instructions and long answers both add time.
  4. Voice. Text-to-speech turns the reply into audio.
  5. The network. Audio travels over the internet and the telephone network to the caller's phone.

How it feels on an Indian call

  • Agent: "Aapka delivery address Sector 62, Noida hai, sahi?"
  • Caller: "Haan, sahi hai."

If the next line comes after an awkward silence, the caller says "Hello? Hello?" and talks over the agent. A study of turn-taking across many languages (Stivers and colleagues, PNAS, 2009) found that people usually reply within a fraction of a second, which is why a gap on a call feels long so quickly.

Why it matters

Slow replies make callers repeat themselves, interrupt or hang up. Short replies help as much as fast systems do: a two-line answer is quicker to say and easier to follow on the phone.

How Kallix approaches it

Kallix has the greeting ready before the caller picks up. Use the response guidelines in the agent studio to keep replies short and spoken, then place a test call from your browser and judge the pace yourself before you launch.

Test an agent before launch

Common questions.

More on the FAQ page, or write to us.

One that feels like a normal conversation to your callers. Rather than chase one number, place test calls over a real phone line, listen for awkward gaps and note where callers talk over the agent.

No. Kallix doesn't quote response times until they've been measured across real calls. Place a test call and judge the pace for yourself.

Close. Latency usually means the technical delay at each stage; response time is the total gap the caller hears between finishing a sentence and the agent speaking.

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