Hi team, In my booking assistant flow we ask for a customer name. Alot of the times foreign names dont get recognized, which is ok and understandable. However, becasue the Transcriber wont generate output if it can't recognize a word, the voice agent just stays silent. I want the agent to continue after hearing answer, even if the transcriber can't make anything out of it - we still catch their phone number which is the most important. What's te best way to fix this? transcriber confidence treshold on 0? > that would be sub ideal as I only need it for the name part. Curious to your solution. assistant: 62ab12d1-6983-449c-b691-4c739b94d7e2 Kind regards, Stan

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To handle unrecognized or low-confidence names, use the

assistant.transcriber.endpointedSpeechLowConfidence

hook to prompt the user and move on. Here’s a focused example:

json
{
  "hooks": [
    {
      "on": "assistant.transcriber.endpointedSpeechLowConfidence[confidence=0.0:0.4]",
      "do": [
        {
          "type": "say",
          "exact": "I didn't catch that clearly, but let's continue. Could you please provide your phone number?"
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}

This will let your assistant acknowledge the name attempt and smoothly proceed to the next step ([see documentation](https://docs.vapi.ai/assistants/assistant-hooks)). Source: - [Assistant hooks](https://docs.vapi.ai/assistants/assistant-hooks)

Thanks for the info! However, this means this will apply to the whole conversation (to every question asked in my booking flow via the system prompt) I only want it to apply to a specific part in my prompt (asking the name part) afaik its not context aware.

Hi Stan, I hear you, this is a common pain point with foreign or uncommon names. The confidence threshold affects the entire flow, so for just the name prompt, a hook that checks for silence or empty transcription is usually more reliable. This way, the agent can move on and still capture the phone number. Curious are you open to using a “fallback” node for just the name step, or do you want it fully within the same VAPI prompt? @Pumpc4t

Heya! I would prefer fully within the same vapi prompt - if theres no other way a fallback node is ok (does this mean i need to work in flow mode perse?, as im currently not.) Ive integrated a silence hook but it will keep misinterpreting difficult names after asking 'are you still there' usually making ppl repeat their name. Also integrated the assistant.transcriber.endpointedSpeechLowConfidence[confidence=0.0:0.4] hook while deepgram has 0 confidence treshhold: still it will trigger the idle message after i mumble some fake "mbmbmbm" or "Alhanzuahdiasidandn" name.

Hey! I totally get the issue foreign or unusual names often produce no transcript, so the low-confidence hook won’t trigger and the agent can stall. The best approach is to combine a low-confidence check with a silence/no-transcript fallback just for the name prompt, letting the agent repeat the question once and then move on automatically without losing the phone number. I’ve helped others set this up fully within VAPI prompts, no full flow needed. Happy to walk you through the exact setup, we can discuss the details more privately if you want. @Pumpc4t

that would be great! its gonna be an in-production agent so the smoother it works the better ✨

Awesome, if it’s going into production, this is exactly the right time to harden it. The cleanest setup we’ve seen avoids silence loops, retries the name once, and then gracefully moves on so the booking never stalls. It’s a bit nuanced to explain in-thread, but happy to walk you through the exact prompt + hook logic we use. Let’s discuss it privately and I’ll break it down and handle this directly for you .

Will DM you thanks!

checking if this is resolved/solved for you?

Ive worked it out on the server side, all good now thanks!