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These settings make the difference between “obviously a robot” and a conversation people stay in. All of them are per-assistant.

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Background audio

Complete silence sounds artificial on the phone. You can layer in:
  • Ambient sound — office, city, forest, crowded room, or keyboard typing, with adjustable volume (or your own uploaded audio).
  • Thinking sound — a subtle sound while the assistant is thinking — during the LLM wait and any tool calls — so processing never sounds like a dropped call.
Hold music is not part of this section: it’s configured directly on the warm transfer tool (built-in track or your own upload), since it only ever plays while a supervisor is being briefed.

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Interruption handling

Callers interrupt — good assistants deal with it gracefully.
  • Allow interruptions — on by default; the assistant stops speaking when the caller talks over it.
  • Minimum interruption duration — ignores very short noises so a cough doesn’t cut the assistant off.
  • Adaptive interruptions — backchanneling like “mhm”, “okay”, or “right” is not treated as an interruption, so the assistant keeps talking through natural listener feedback but yields to a real interjection. In compatible realtime modes, select Adaptive under Turn detection to use this behavior.

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Filler phrases & async tools

When a tool call (CRM lookup, availability check) takes seconds, the assistant can bridge the gap:
  • Speak-during text — a fixed announcement at tool start (“One moment, I’m checking that…”).
  • Filler phrases — a rotating set of short phrases spoken during longer waits, with configurable initial delay and interval. Spoken only in pauses — they never talk over the caller.
  • Async tools — mark a tool node as asynchronous and the conversation continues while the tool runs; the result is woven in once it arrives.

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Idle handling

Nobody wants a call that hangs forever in silence:
  • Idle timeout — after this many seconds of silence, the assistant checks in (“Are you still there?”).
  • Idle messages — optional fixed phrases for those check-ins; leave empty for natural LLM-generated ones.
  • Max rounds — after N unanswered check-ins, the assistant says goodbye and hangs up. This also protects your minute balance.
Independently, max call duration caps every call: when reached, the assistant wraps up politely and ends the call. For jurisdictions requiring all-party consent (Germany: §201 StGB):
  • Consent announcement — a configurable message played at call start (pre-generated, zero added latency).
  • Consent mode — the caller agrees verbally or by pressing a key (DTMF).
  • On decline — either continue the call, or end it politely.
  • The consent result is stored with the call, audit-proof.
One announcement can cover two separate purposes. Tick them independently in the assistant editor:
  • Recording the call — the recording starts only after consent, never before, and additionally requires Record calls. Asked on every call, because each recording needs its own permission.
  • Remember callers — a granted consent unlocks that caller’s durable memory, so returning callers are recognised without anyone approving them by hand under Audience → Customer memory. Asked once.
A declined consent is never stored as a permanent refusal: the caller is simply asked again on a later call. The memory consent is re-asked only after the retention window under Settings → Memory has lapsed without a call — the expired memory is deleted, so the next call starts fresh.
Each purpose must be named in the announcement. Consent to being recorded is not consent to storing a customer profile — they are different purposes under GDPR. When you tick a purpose, the editor offers matching wording in the assistant’s language; leaving the text empty falls back to a purpose- and language-aware default.If Record calls is on while the announcement does not cover recording, the assistant refuses to record and logs recording_skipped_no_consent — it will never record without a notice.

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Guardrails

Deterministic safety rails on top of the prompt:
  • Manipulation → Prompt injection — blocks attempts to bypass or override system instructions (jailbreak detection in the caller’s speech). Available on every plan, on by default; uncheck to opt out (guardrails.input.jailbreak).
  • Blocked topics — subjects the assistant must refuse; matched output is replaced by your refusal text (Fallbacks & Guardrails).
  • Escalation keywords — if the caller mentions one (e.g. “lawyer”, “emergency”), the platform — not the LLM — triggers an immediate transfer to your escalation number (Fallbacks & Guardrails).
Topic and category filters are enforced in the output path, so they hold even when a clever caller talks the model around its prompt.

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Pronunciation & text cleanup

See Models & voices → Speaking style: pronunciation dictionary, markdown/emoji filtering, speaking rate, and output volume.