Sounds right

How CallWhiz AI handles interruptions and end-of-turn

A CallWhiz AI agent stops the moment a caller interrupts it and treats a mid-thought pause as a pause rather than a finished turn. End-of-turn is an acoustic decision tuned for phone audio, not a fixed silence timer or a keyword list.

Updated 21 September 2026

In short: Interruption and end-of-turn are decided from how the caller’s voice actually ends, which is what makes a phone conversation feel like a conversation.

Definitions

End-of-turn
The moment a caller has finished speaking and expects a reply. CallWhiz AI decides it from how the voice trails off.
Barge-in
The caller speaking while the agent is speaking. The agent stops and listens. A one-word backchannel is gated so it does not derail a sentence.
Backchannel
A short acknowledgement a listener makes without taking the turn, such as “uh-huh” or “right”.

What it does

  • Interrupt it mid-sentence and it stops to listen, the way a person does.
  • When you talk over it, its own voice drops out of your way instead of competing with you.
  • A pause mid-thought is treated as a pause, not as your turn ending. It waits instead of talking over the end of your sentence.
  • If a call goes silent it re-engages once, and ends the call cleanly rather than holding an empty line.
  • If the caller says goodbye, the call ends there. No last word after the farewell.

How it works

End-of-turn is an acoustic decision, how the voice trails off, rather than a fixed silence timer or a keyword list, with barge-in gated so a one-word backchannel does not derail a sentence. Turn-taking is tuned for phone audio specifically, which behaves nothing like a laptop microphone.

Related questions

How does CallWhiz AI handle interruptions?

A CallWhiz AI agent stops speaking when the caller interrupts it mid-sentence, drops its own voice out of the way when talked over, and treats a mid-thought pause as a pause rather than the end of the caller's turn. End-of-turn is an acoustic decision based on how the caller's voice trails off, not a fixed silence timer or a keyword list.

What does the agent do if the line goes silent?

If a call goes silent, a CallWhiz AI agent re-engages once and then ends the call cleanly rather than holding an empty line. If the caller says goodbye, the call ends there, with no last word after the farewell.

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