AI voice call settings are the three limits that keep a screen from turning into a seminar. Max silence defaults to 5 seconds, and you can set it from 1 to 30. No-input retries default to 3, and you can set them from 0 to 10. Max interaction time defaults to 180 seconds, and the allowed range is 30 to 600. Leave the defaults until a week of transcripts shows a real problem. A longer cap does not create a better qualification. It creates more room to say something the question card never allowed. The AI still does not enroll, quote, bind, or recommend. The $50 seat unlocks the profile. Live minutes bill from the wallet.
The three clocks on the profile
The AI voice call settings to leave alone at first
Max silence is how long the profile waits after it asks something and hears nothing. Five seconds is the default. That is long enough for a caller to start a sentence and short enough that a dead line does not sit there. Raising it toward 30 seconds because one caller was slow will park everyone else in quiet. Lowering it to 1 second will trip people who simply inhale. Change it by a second or two, then listen. Do not treat the slider as a way to sound more patient. Patience you want in the script is a short line: take your time, then the same question again. The clock is only the gap before that retry.
No-input retries are how many times the profile repeats itself when it gets silence or no usable answer. Three is the default. Zero means one miss and you are in the fallback. Ten means a caller can sit through a long loop. Use the low end for a simple receptionist and do not raise it so the bot can 'try harder' to qualify someone who is not responding. After the retries, the incomplete or timeout outcome fires. That outcome should be the fallback you chose: a polite decline, a transfer, voicemail, or a hang-up. A retry is not a new sales attempt with fresh wording you did not write.
Max interaction time is the hard stop. One hundred eighty seconds is three minutes, which is enough to greet, ask state and intent, and book or transfer. The floor of the setting is 30 seconds. The ceiling is 600, which is ten minutes. Ten minutes is the wrong default for an insurance front door. In ten minutes a fluent model can wander into benefits, health details, and a fake next step. If your question card cannot be finished in three minutes, the card is too long. Cut questions. Do not raise the cap to fit them. Put the number you saved in the same note as the greeting so a later editor sees it.
What a long AI call usually means
Read duration before you read adjectives. If average length on this profile climbs toward the cap, you have a design problem: too many questions, a prompt that invites small talk, retries set too high, or transfers that fail and fall back into more talk. The analytics view shows average duration in seconds and a completion rate. Use those as your own week-over-week figures. Do not import a benchmark from another agency or from a blog. You do not have their script, their consent, or their book. A short call that books the right person is a success. A long call that ends in a polite decline may still be correct. Length without the outcome is not a score.
Split the recording review by outcome. Transfers should be the shortest qualified path: greeting, required fields, bridge. Bookings should include a repeated day and time and then stop. Messages should capture the note and stop. Disqualifications should use the sentence you wrote and stop. If any of those keep talking after the outcome message, the prompt is adding a second close. Delete that instruction. The licensed agent is the one who may continue, and only after the bridge, under your sales process. The AI minute you already paid for should not include a rehearsal of the pitch.
Test the clocks before a live surge
Place four test calls and write down the clocks you hit. Call one: answer cleanly and confirm you finish well under 180 seconds. Call two: stay silent and count the retries. You should hear the question again up to the retry count, then the fallback, not a new topic. Call three: answer in fragments and pause just under the silence setting, and confirm you are not cut off mid-thought. Call four: try to keep the bot talking with side questions about price. It should refuse and end or transfer, and the cap should still kill the call if it does not. Save the four durations. If call two lasts many minutes, retries or the cap are wrong. Fix them before the campaign number is public.
You can rehearse the same four patterns on a Training agent at $0.15 a minute if you do not want them on the live number. The clocks on that profile are still the clocks. Training does not exempt you from a 180-second cap you forgot to set. Fallback is the path after the retries fail. Interruption mode is the other behavior setting callers feel in the same second. Set them together. A patient tone with a one-second silence and ignore-interruptions will feel like a rude hang-up no matter what the prompt says.
When you are allowed to move a number
Move max silence only after you can point to transcripts where real callers were cut off or where dead air ran the full gap. Move retries only after you see either a loop or a single miss that should have been repeated. Move max interaction time almost never, and never upward to hide a long script. If counsel or a carrier audit wants a shorter call, lower the cap and cut questions in the same edit. Document the old value and the new value. The range allows 30 to 600 seconds. The fact that 600 is allowed is not a recommendation. Three minutes is the operating assumption until your own transcripts force a small change.
Tell the floor what the cap means for them. A transfer that arrives near the three-minute mark is not a caller the AI 'built rapport' with. It is a caller who should already be qualified. If agents complain the AI is abrupt, listen to the recording before you raise the cap. Abrupt and complete is better than warm and unlicensed. Abrupt and missing the state is a question-card bug. Fix the card. The settings are there so a model with a temperature default of 0.7 cannot talk its way into a ten-minute sales call. Leave the temperature alone unless you have a written reason and a new set of test calls.
How AgentTech enforces the three clocks
AI voice agents stores max silence, no-input retries, and max interaction time on the profile. Defaults are 5 seconds, 3 retries, and 180 seconds. Ranges are 1 to 30, 0 to 10, and 30 to 600. AI receptionist and AI lead qualification both inherit whatever you save. The incomplete outcome should match the fallback, so the last retry does not invent a new path. Minutes bill from the prepaid wallet on the $50 seat. A longer call costs more and says more. Both are reasons to stay at the default until evidence says otherwise.
AI mock calls is the safe place to hear the clocks, at $0.15 a minute, with your own producers or a test. compliance scoring then shows whether live calls are finishing inside the cap or riding it. Use your duration and completion figures. Do not publish an industry average you do not have. When the cap hits, the call ends. That is the point. A setting that never fires because you raised it to 600 seconds is not a kinder experience. It is an unsupervised script. Write 5, 3, and 180 into the campaign note before anyone moves a slider.
Frequently Asked Questions
What are the default AI voice call settings?
Max silence is 5 seconds, in a range of 1 to 30. No-input retries are 3, in a range of 0 to 10. Max interaction time is 180 seconds, in a range of 30 to 600. Start there.
Should we raise the cap for older callers?
Not by default, and not based on a hearing statistic you do not have. If transcripts show people being cut off, adjust silence by a second or two and offer a repeat. Do not jump the cap toward 600 seconds.
Does the cap make the call compliant?
No. A short call can still say a banned sentence, and a legal call can still be the wrong length for your script. The cap limits damage from wandering. Your greeting, prompt, and consent process still have to be right.
Key Takeaways for Agency Operators
- Start at 5, 3, and 180. Silence seconds, retries, and max length.
- The ceiling is 600 seconds. That is not the recommendation.
- Retries end in fallback. They are not a new pitch.
- Long calls are a design smell. Cut questions before you raise the cap.
- Test silence, retries, and a price question. Then save the durations.
After the clocks, set fallback when the caller is unclear and interruption handling for older callers.
