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Overview

Callers pause in the middle of things. They stop to find a card, read out a number in pieces, or say “one minute” while they check something. Without a check, the agent hears the pause as the end of the turn and replies too soon. With Wait for unfinished sentences on, Bananaflow checks, each time the caller pauses, whether they actually finished before the agent replies. If they did not, the agent waits. This adds a short check before each reply. If the check does not answer in time, the agent replies as it would without it, so a slow check never holds up the call.

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The three answers

The check always gives one of three answers. The answers are fixed and cannot be changed. If the caller starts speaking again during a wait, the wait ends and the agent keeps listening. The next pause is checked again, on everything the caller has said in that turn.

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Turning it on

  1. Open the agent and go to Settings, then Voice & conversation.
  2. Under Turn detection, turn on Wait for unfinished sentences.
  3. Save, then publish the agent for the change to reach live calls.
New agents on Bananaflow-managed voices start with it on. Agents created before this setting existed keep it off until you turn it on. The check only runs when Bananaflow itself decides that the caller has paused. The page greys the setting out, and says why, when:
  • the agent’s voice decides by itself when the caller has finished, because its speech recognition marks the end of each turn, or
  • the agent uses a realtime voice, which handles turn-taking itself.

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The two waits

Both waits are in seconds. The wait when the caller asks for time must be at least as long as the wait after a cut-off sentence, and the page shows an error until it is.

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The prompt for the check

The check follows a prompt, and you can read and change all of it. Nothing is hidden from you. It is under Prompt for the check, below the two waits. The answer is always done, cut off or needs time. The prompt only changes how the check decides. No prompt can change the answers.

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Default and custom

The box starts filled with the default prompt. Edit it in place to make it your own. For example, add a line about your callers:
With that line, a caller who says “my number is 98450” and pauses is treated as cut off, so the agent waits for the rest of the number. The prompt can be up to 12,000 characters, and a counter below the box shows how many you have used.

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Going back to the default

Reset to default puts the default prompt back in the box. It is only active when the prompt is custom. You never save a copy of the default by accident. If your text is the same as the default once spaces at the start and end are ignored, or the box is empty, the agent is saved as using the default, and keeps getting updates to it.

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If the default prompt cannot be loaded

The page says so. If the agent has a custom prompt, you can still see and edit it. If the agent uses the default, the box is not shown until the default loads again. Reload the page to try again.
As with any settings change, save and then publish the agent for a new prompt to reach live calls.