Call Lifetime
Re-engage silent callers and cap call length so calls never get stuck.
Two flow-level settings control how and when a call ends on its own — independent of where the conversation is in your flow. Configure both under Flow Settings → Call lifetime in the builder. Use them together: inactivity handling ends quiet calls, and a maximum length caps long ones.
Inactivity handling
When the caller goes silent after the agent finishes speaking, the agent checks in — "Are you still there?" — and ends the call politely if there's still no response. On by default.
Each silence escalates. The first checks are short, LLM-generated nudges that adapt to the conversation's language and tone; the final check speaks a fixed goodbye and hangs up.
| Setting | Default | Range | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| Enabled | On | — | Re-engagement runs unless you turn it off. Disabling is the only way to opt out. |
| Timeout | 10s | 1–600s | Seconds of caller silence (after the agent stops speaking) before the first nudge. Keep it comfortably above your LLM's response time so the agent isn't nudged mid-reply. |
| Max prompts | 2 | 1–10 | Total idle checks before the call ends. Checks 1…N−1 are nudges; check N speaks the end message and hangs up. The default of 2 means one "are you still there?" nudge, then end on the next silence. |
| Reset on caller speech | Off | — | When off, attempts accumulate until the cap — guaranteeing an abandoned call terminates even with background noise. When on, the counter restarts on any caller turn (more forgiving of long pauses, but background noise can reset it). |
| Prompts | Built-in | ≤10 items | Optional custom instructions for the nudge attempts. If you provide fewer than needed, the last one is reused. Leave empty to use sensible defaults. |
| End message | Built-in | ≤1000 chars | Fixed goodbye spoken verbatim on the final attempt. Not LLM-generated, so the teardown stays predictable. |
The escalation counter is monotonic by default — it only ever counts up. This guarantees an unattended call hangs up even if periodic background noise keeps tripping voice detection. Turn on Reset on caller speech only if your calls have long, expected pauses.
Maximum call length
A hard ceiling on how long any single call can run, measured from the moment the call is answered. When reached, the agent speaks a brief goodbye and hangs up — regardless of conversation state. Off by default, because the right limit is business-specific.
| Setting | Default | Range | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| Enabled | Off | — | The cap applies only when turned on. |
| Seconds | 600 (10 min) | 30s–14400s (4h) | Maximum total call duration. The clock starts when the call is answered, not when the agent warms up. |
| End message | Built-in | ≤1000 chars | Fixed goodbye spoken before hanging up. Set it to an empty string to hang up silently with no goodbye. |
The cap is a graceful ceiling, not a hard cut: a goodbye queued behind an in-progress sentence waits for that sentence to finish before the call ends. The call is still guaranteed to terminate.
How they compare
These settings, plus an always-on backstop, give three independent layers of stuck-call protection:
| Mechanism | Triggers on | Default |
|---|---|---|
| Inactivity handling | Caller silence after the agent stops speaking | On |
| Maximum call length | Total wall-clock time since the call was answered | Off |
| No-audio backstop | No agent audio at all for an extended period | Always on |
Inactivity handling depends on conversation state (the caller went quiet). Maximum call length fires unconditionally on a timer. The no-audio backstop catches a wedged agent that has gone completely silent. Enable both configurable layers for full coverage.