When I added my twill number to the assistant, when you place a call the assistant picks up right away, no dial tone. How do we add a delay or at least a dial tone?

Hi there! 👋 I understand you're experiencing an issue where your assistant picks up calls immediately without a dial tone when using your Twilio number. While I couldn't find information on how to directly add a dial tone sound, I can definitely help with adding a delay before the assistant picks up. Here are several ways you can add a delay before your assistant answers: 1. Increase the wait time before speaking - You can configure

startSpeakingPlan.waitSeconds

to introduce a delay before the assistant starts speaking:

javascript
const assistant = {
  firstMessageMode: 'assistant-speaks-first',
  startSpeakingPlan: {
    waitSeconds: 2 // Waits 2 seconds before speaking
  }
  // ... other configurations
};

According to [Discord conversations](https://discord.com/channels/1211482211119796234/1343915991670853654), the default is 0.4 seconds, but increasing it to 0.8 or higher can give enough time for processing. 2. Add conditional delays with custom endpointing rules - You can use

customEndpointingRules

with the

delayMs

parameter:

javascript
startSpeakingPlan: {
  customEndpointingRules: [
    {
      type: 'assistant',
      regex: '.*voicemail.*',  // Adjust based on your needs
      delayMs: 3000  // Adds a 3-second delay
    }
  ]
}

3. Change the first message mode - Setting

firstMessageMode

to

assistant-waits-for-user

can prevent the assistant from picking up immediately, as mentioned in the [voicemail detection documentation](https://docs.vapi.ai/phone-calling/voice-mail-detection). 4. Configure base delay seconds - You can use

backoffPlan.baseDelaySeconds

to introduce an initial delay before the assistant picks up the call. 5. Adjust voicemail detection settings - According to [troubleshooting information](https://discord.com/channels/1211482211119796234/1341683766397108287), some users solved similar issues by deactivating the voicemail function or adjusting parameters like

machineDetectionTimeout

.

To add a dial tone before your assistant responds via Twilio, either set a response delay in the assistant's settings or use a TwiML Bin in Twilio to play a message before redirecting the call to Vapi.