# Delay establishing connection on outbound call?

**URL:** <https://community.retellai.com/t/delay-establishing-connection-on-outbound-call/2276>\
**Category:** Support Help\
**Tags:** telephony\
**Created:** [April 9, 2026, 7:52pm UTC](https://community.retellai.com/t/delay-establishing-connection-on-outbound-call/2276 "2026-04-09T19:52:25Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 4\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![anthony3](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/flex008/user_avatar/community.retellai.com/anthony3/32/1392_2.png) [@anthony3](https://community.retellai.com/u/anthony3)\
**Post date:** [April 9, 2026, 7:52pm UTC](https://community.retellai.com/t/delay-establishing-connection-on-outbound-call/2276/1 "2026-04-09T19:52:25Z")

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Hello support! When creating an outbound call via API it seems like there’s quite a long delay establishing the connection to our agent.

Our agent is set with “user speaks first”. What we’re seeing in practice is that the user has to say “Hello” 2-3 times (about 6 seconds) before our agent / trasncriber picks it up…. this is hurting our conversation success rate.

An example call is here: call\_3351a914d3f54b7d132038f6814

The AI chat was unhelpful on the topic, I’m hoping for more guidance on how to make the connection feel like a real phone call.

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**Author:** ![Shah-Fazal](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/flex008/user_avatar/community.retellai.com/shah-fazal/32/2522_2.png) [@Shah-Fazal](https://community.retellai.com/u/Shah-Fazal)\
**Post date:** [April 9, 2026, 8:26pm UTC](https://community.retellai.com/t/delay-establishing-connection-on-outbound-call/2276/2 "2026-04-09T20:26:08Z")

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Hi @anthony3

Thank you for providing the call ID. I’ve shared it with our team for review.

We’ll keep you updated as soon as we have more information.

Best regards

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**Author:** ![Shah-Fazal](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/flex008/user_avatar/community.retellai.com/shah-fazal/32/2522_2.png) [@Shah-Fazal](https://community.retellai.com/u/Shah-Fazal)\
**Post date:** [April 10, 2026, 1:01pm UTC](https://community.retellai.com/t/delay-establishing-connection-on-outbound-call/2276/3 "2026-04-10T13:01:55Z")

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Hey @anthony3

Can you consider configuring these in your agent:

1. Switch to “Agent Speaks First” (recommended for outbound calls): This is the most natural behavior — when someone picks up an outbound call, they expect the caller to identify themselves immediately. You can change this in your LLM settings by setting `start_speaker` to `"agent"` and providing a `begin_message`. This eliminates the silent period entirely.

2. If you prefer to keep “User Speaks First”, reduce the `begin_after_user_silence_ms` to something shorter like 1500–2000ms. This shortens the fallback window so the agent jumps in faster if the user’s initial speech isn’t immediately recognized.

Additionally, your agent uses the most aggressive background noise cancellation mode `noise-and-background-speech-cancellation`), which may contribute to slower initial speech detection. You could try switching to standard `noise-cancellation` to see if the user’s “Hello” is picked up faster.

Thank You

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![anthony3](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/flex008/user_avatar/community.retellai.com/anthony3/32/1392_2.png) [@anthony3](https://community.retellai.com/u/anthony3)\
**Post date:** [April 10, 2026, 1:18pm UTC](https://community.retellai.com/t/delay-establishing-connection-on-outbound-call/2276/4 "2026-04-10T13:18:54Z")

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Thanks, I’ll update those settings and have the agent jump in faster.

Btw, the natural behavior is not agent speaks first on outbound call. User picks up the phone says “hello?” and then the conversation begins. Not immediately getting an agent response before they have a chance to say something. Hope this feedback helps on making the outbound flow more successful.