We built a VAPI agent that works for a real estate company. She can take a property identifier then look in the CRM, find the property, and read details back to the caller about it. It works fine, except for one important point. Whenever the agent tells the caller the price of the home, she says it like, "three eight zero zero zero zero euros" when she should be saying "three hundred and eighty thousand euros". We changed the prompt to be very verbose and specific but she never follows the instruction. Is there something else we should be doing or a setting that we are missing? Here is an exerpt from our prompt: "You work at John Doe Realty, a Boston real estate agency in the second generation of supporting people who want to sell their property or buy their own home. When someone calls, they might be inquiring about a property they saw online, selling a property they own, or looking to buy. Your job is to ask concise, focused questions to determine exactly what they need, take detailed notes, and let them know that a real estate agent will be in touch soon. Important Instructions: -- General Responses: When responding to general inquiries, always summarize key points instead of reading large things verbatim. Put EVERYTHING into your own words, providing concise answers with the most relevant information. Never get too deep in the details. -- Property Pricing: VERY IMPORTANT! When stating the price of a property, always express it in spoken form or natural language. Never under any circumstances read a price one digit at a time, that is not how humans understand numbers. Always avoid reading individual digits. If you start reading digits, immediately correct yourself and restate the price using natural language. Example: 'The price is 143,000 euros' should be stated as 'one hundred and forty-three thousand euros,' not as individual digits. -- Email Handling: When asking for the caller’s email, clarify the spelling naturally by confirming letters one by one. Say something like: “Could you please confirm your email address? I’ll spell it back to ensure I got it right. Let’s go one letter at a time.” If there’s any confusion, kindly ask them to repeat it. -- You do not need to read each field about the property back to the customer. Try to take all the information together and spin it as a narrative. Do not say “Details” then read each field, that’s a big no-no. For example, if the house has a lot of space, a big lot size and 3 or more bedrooms, tell the caller that it is a spacious home with 3 bedrooms and a big yard rather than saying title X rooms Y, etc In summary, everything should be put into your own words.

@Michael P It sounds like you've done a great job of providing detailed instructions for your VAPI agent. However, if the agent is still not pronouncing the property prices correctly, it may be an issue with the text-to-speech (TTS) system's handling of numbers. Here are a few suggestions to address this issue: 1. **TTS Configuration**: Check if there's an option in your TTS engine to set the pronunciation of numbers to a "verbal" or "full spoken" format. This setting would automatically convert numerical values into their spoken equivalents. 2. **Script Formatting**: If the TTS engine doesn't support automatic conversion, you might need to format the numbers in the script manually. Instead of inputting "380000", you would input "three hundred and eighty thousand" directly into the script. 3. **Custom Pronunciation Dictionary**: Some TTS systems allow you to create a custom pronunciation dictionary. You can specify that "380000" should be read as "three hundred and eighty thousand euros". 4. **Pre-processing Script**: Implement a pre-processing step in your system that converts numerical prices into their written-out form before sending the text to the TTS engine. 5. **TTS Engine Update**: If none of the above solutions work, consider updating your TTS engine or switching to a different one that handles numerical values more naturally. If you need further assistance with configuring your TTS system or if these suggestions do not resolve the issue, please reach out to the support team for more specific guidance.

Thank you @Vapi - we are not using any custom TTS system or configuration, just what VAPI offers out of the box. Where would I find such a configuration?

@Michael P If you're using VAPI's out-of-the-box TTS capabilities, it's possible that the configuration for number pronunciation might not be directly accessible to you. However, you can try the following steps: 1. **Check the Documentation**: Review the documentation provided by VAPI to see if there are any settings or parameters that can be adjusted to change how numbers are pronounced. 2. **Contact Support**: If the documentation doesn't provide a clear answer, reach out to VAPI's support team. They can provide specific instructions on how to configure the TTS engine to pronounce numbers in a more natural way. 3. **Provider Configuration**: If VAPI allows you to choose different TTS providers, you might be able to select a provider that has better number pronunciation. You would typically add the provider key and select the provider in the assistant configuration. 4. **Feedback Loop**: If there's a way to provide feedback to the TTS engine (like a learning system), you could correct the pronunciation each time it occurs, hoping the system will learn the correct way over time. 5. **Workaround**: As a temporary workaround, you could manually format the numbers in your script to be written out as words before sending them to the TTS engine. If you're still unable to find the configuration or if the issue persists, please ask support for more info on this. They should be able to guide you through the process or provide an alternative solution.

Thank you for the workaround. I implemented it and it works, though it feels hacky. I am going to mark this as resolved for now since I have a path forward, but if anyone else knows a way to fix this more cleanly please let me know!

@Michael P Sweet. Have a great day!