Latency/Status Fillers executing after custom tool completion instead of during execution

Support Help
1

Hello Retell Support Team,

I am experiencing an issue with my Multi-Prompt Stateful agent where the conversational status fillers/search behaviors are not playing during the latency period of a tool execution. Instead, the agent stays completely silent during the tool run, and then states the filler phrase after the tool has already fully completed its execution.

Here is what we are experiencing:

  • When a user asks about inventory, the agent is supposed to say “Ok, let me check our inventory for that, please wait for a moment” immediately upon triggering the get_vehicle_info tool to mask the processing delay.
  • Instead, the agent sits in silence while the tool runs, completes the tool execution, and then says the filler phrase before delivering the data, which sounds very unnatural.

What we have already tried to fix it:

  1. Enabled “Talk During Execution”: We turned this feature on for the tool, but the agent still waits until the tool finishes to say the phrase.
  2. Global Prompt Instructions: We added a strict rule under # Search & Conversational Filler Behavior instructing the model to immediately trigger the phrase as a filler before the tool completes execution.
  3. State Prompt Rules: We tried explicitly adding the phrase to the step instructions immediately preceding the tool function call.

Despite these prompt constraints and settings, the model continues to delay the vocalization until post-execution. Could you please look into our agent configuration or help us understand if there is a conflict in how the state handles latency fillers?

  • Workspace ID: org_irKkpUIQqSZzRYzA
  • Agent Name: Tony

Thank you!

2

Hello @adeel.dev007 Thanks for the details can you share your Agent ID , and any relevant Call IDs for a Review. Thanks

3

Thanks for the response, Mark! I think I have actually just figured out what the issue is on our end. I’ll test it out and will come back to let you know if I still need any more help. Thanks again!