---
title: Best Practices for Build a VoiceX AI Agent
sidebar_label: Best practices
---

## Managing Latency in VoiceX Conversations

The average voice-to-voice latency (time between the user’s last word and the bot’s first word) in a VoiceX conversation is approximately **1.5 seconds**. Below is the latency breakdown:

- **Final Silence Duration**: 200 ms
- **STT (Speech-to-Text) Transcription**: 0 - 300 ms
- **Platform Latency / LLM First Sentence**: 1 - 1.5 s
- **TTS (Text-to-Speech) Time to First Chunk**: 0 - 1 s
- **Total Latency**: **1.5 - 2.7 s**

> If latency exceeds **1.5 - 2.7 seconds** for multiple turns, raise a **DevRev ticket**.

## Enable Interruptions

Enabling interruptions allows the AI to handle real-time user inputs more effectively. This ensures a smoother and more natural conversation flow by allowing users to interject or change topics without waiting for the bot to finish speaking.

To allow bot to handle interruptions:
1. Go to **Dynamic Chat node** > **Voice Configuration**
2. Toggle on the **Enable interruption** button.
3. Set the **Final Silence Duration** to **0.2 seconds**.


## Improve Speech Recognition Accuracy with Boost Phrases

Use **Boost Phrases** to enhance recognition accuracy for industry-specific jargon, technical terms, regional definitions, and locations. There are two ways to pass Boost Phrases:

1. **In the Question/Text Node**
- Pass a predefined list of boost phrases in the node configuration.
- Alternatively, use a function to dynamically generate an array of boost phrases and pass them via **custom voice options** under the `boost_phrases` key.

2. **In the Dynamic Chat (DC) Node**
- A fixed set of words and phrases can be passed via **Dynamic Node > Voice Configuration > Boost Phrases**.

## Knowledge Base (KB) Integration
Knowledge Base searching is now available in VoiceX conversations via **Skills**. You can either:
- Create a dedicated **KB skill**, or
- Enable **document search** within an existing skill.

### Reducing User-Perceived Latency
To minimize user frustration during the KB search wait time, use the following techniques:

1. **Acknowledge the request with preemptive messages**. These messages will play in parallel to the KB search function, reducing perceived wait time by **1-3 seconds**. Examples:
- *“Hold on, let me fetch it for you.”*
- *“Give me a moment to check this.”*

2. **Set expectations upfront with conversational fillers**. These create a smoother, more human-like interaction, reducing frustration during brief wait periods. Examples:
- *“This might take a few seconds, hang tight!”*
- *“Give me some time, I’m fetching it for you.”*
- *“Please wait, I’m finding the best answer.”*


:::note

KB responses take **7-15 seconds** to generate. Efforts are underway to reduce this latency.
:::