Dialogflow CX - Voice bot takes too long to response

[manojv]

I have a voice Bot integrated with the Cisco Webex contact center. This BOT is used for collecting customers' names when they call in. But after collecting the name, the BOT is taking almost 15 seconds of silence before moving to the next prompt. Is there any setting to reduce the speech timeout option so that immediately after the agent enters a full name, the BOT will go to the next option?

Thanks in advance.

[Aris_O]

Hi @manojv 

Welcome to Google Cloud Community.

The speech timeout parameter in your voice bot can be changed to ensure that it advances to the following question as soon as the agent inputs a full name. The platform or application you use to build and administer your bot may determine the precise processes you follow, however the following are some broad guidelines:

• Access your voice bot's settings. To do this, you might need to enter into a dashboard or control panel or directly access the bot's configuration files.
• Adjust the setting to a lower value. Depending on the specific platform or software you are using, you may be able to set this value in seconds or milliseconds. Start with a low value (e.g., 1 second) and test to see if this is enough time for your agents to enter a full name. If necessary, you can increase the timeout setting gradually until you find the optimal value.
• Save your changes and test the bot to make sure the new timeout setting is working as expected.

Please take note also that reducing the speech timeout setting too much could result in the bot moving on to the next prompt before the agent has finished speaking, so it's important to find the right balance between responsiveness and accuracy. A setting for speech or voice recognition timeouts should be found. The term "speech timeout," "recognition timeout," or a phrase to that effect may be used to describe this.

Here are some documentation that you may use as a reference:
https://cloud.google.com/blog/topics/partners/updates-on-google-collaborations-with-cisco-featured-a...
https://cloud.google.com/cisco?_ga=2.146133492.-1392753435.1676655686
https://cloud.google.com/dialogflow/es/docs/integrations?_ga=2.146133492.-1392753435.1676655686

[manojv]

Thank you Aris for the response.

Changing speech timeout is tricky because this setting is valid before the customer speaks any words also. Is there any setting to immediately timeout the speech right after the customer said a valid value? For example, if the customer is asked for his/her name and got a speech response with a first name or first name and last name, then immediately move to the next prompt. Another one is, the customer is asked an 8-digit case number, and immediately after the customer said the 8th digit(matching the entity type with regex) moved to the next prompt. If I use speech timeout with a lower value on the above scenarios, the value will impact if there is delay/silence from the customer before they start talking.

[ritikUber]

I had similar type of query.

Is there a way to maybe put fillers(pre-recorded audio/music) during the long silence? This will help the user anxiety

[Btharan]

Yes, there should be some functionality similar to "Return Partial Responses" for the webhook. Without this, Generative AI responses introduce negative customer experience with the long pauses