P95 under 1,000 ms target
A realistic production per-turn latency target is P95 under approximately 1,000 ms; beyond a couple of seconds, callers begin to disengage, and percentile-based SLOs—not averages—should be used and calibrated against user studies and real caller feedback.
Supporting evidence
Real-Time Voice AI Stack for Agents: Architecture Guide
Original excerpt
Target a P95 turn latency under about 1,000 ms, and treat anything beyond a couple of seconds as the point where callers start to disengage. Set percentile SLOs, not averages, and calibrate against user-study research like this IEEE study on perceived response delay in voice interfaces, then confirm the specific thresholds against your own caller feedback.
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