What makes a voice agent sound natural

Naturalness is mostly about timing. People interrupt, pause, and expect the other side to yield quickly when they start talking.

A good agent detects when the contact starts speaking and stops its own audio immediately (barge-in), uses endpointing to know when a turn is finished, and keeps perceived response latency low.

The goal is tasteful, not theatrical: brief acknowledgments and natural pauses help, while overdoing human tics is distracting and risks sounding deceptive.