Response speed¶

How long the assistant takes to reply, what your customer sees while waiting, and what it depends on.

Typical times¶

Situation	Typical time
Chat, simple question (opening hours, contacts, a piece of information)	2-5 seconds
Chat, search in documents, catalogs or a calendar	5-15 seconds
Chat, complex question with many sources (comparing several products or several trips)	up to 20-30 seconds
Phone, from the end of the customer's sentence to the start of the reply	2-4 seconds

These are indicative times, measured on the services in use: each project has its own, depending on how many sources it has to check.

In chat the real steps of the work in progress appear, for example "Reading your question...", "Searching the catalog...", "Checking dates and prices...". The customer knows the reply is on its way and doesn't think the chat is stuck.
On the phone the assistant can say a short holding phrase when it needs to check the calendar or a management system. The customer can interrupt it at any moment by speaking.

How many sources it checks. Information written in the content is immediate; availability taken from a calendar or a management system needs an extra step.
How long the reply is. A list of five suggestions with links takes longer than a single sentence.
Connected systems. If the management system or website the assistant reads data from responds slowly, the reply slows down too.
Traffic. At peak times, response times can grow a little. Conversations with people always take priority over automatic background jobs.

We give the AI only the information useful for that question, not the whole catalog every time.
Operations not needed for the reply (conversation memory, summaries, statistics) happen afterwards, without making the customer wait.
Live conversations go ahead of automatic jobs.
We monitor response times and step in when a project slows down.

Tidy content with no duplicates. Less text to read means faster and more accurate replies.
Report a slow reply. With the time and the question we find it right away: see The bot made a mistake? Where to start.

A reply that has to check several systems will never be instant: better a few extra seconds and a correct reply than a fast, wrong one.
The times in the table apply to the assistant's service: the customer's internet connection, especially on the phone or on the move, can add a few moments.