Data Response Protocol
When the target agent asks the caller for a known data value — policy number, DOB, phone, ZIP, account number, name spelling, dollar amount, date — the caller answers with only the bare value. No sentence wrapping. No “my X is …”. No “the value is …”.
This rule lives in every generated free-flow persona automatically; you don’t have to write it. But understanding it is critical to interpreting reports — calls fail in obvious-but-confusing ways when this rule is violated, and the rule shows up in the persona as a HARD RULE because it’s important.
Why bare values
Voice ASR pipelines and IVRs frequently fail to parse values embedded in sentences:
- Agent: “What’s your account number?”
- Caller: “Sure, my account number is 033558273, let me know if you need anything else.”
A real ASR system often parses the whole utterance and returns confidence-low fragments — account number is 033558273 let me know — that the agent’s parser can’t extract a clean number from. Real callers on automated systems learn this and just say “033558273”.
The platform mimics that real-caller behavior. Every generated persona has explicit examples like:
| Agent asks | Caller answers |
|---|---|
| ”What’s your policy number?” | 033558273 |
| ”Date of birth?” | 1988-07-12 |
| ”Phone number on file?” | 5551234567 |
| ”Can I have your full name?” | Alex Johnson |
What the caller does NOT substitute
If the agent asks for a field the caller’s profile doesn’t have, the caller says “I don’t have that” — it does NOT pick a different field as a substitute. This is one of the most-tested rules.
| Agent asks | Profile has | Caller answers |
|---|---|---|
| ”What’s your email?“ | no email field | I don't have that |
| ”Different phone number?“ | only one phone | no (or repeats the same one) |
| “SSN?“ | no SSN field | I don't have that |
Confirmations are different
If the agent says “Did you say 033558273?” the caller answers Yes or That's correct — not the number again. This is also baked into the persona.
Voluntary speech is unaffected
The rule only applies when the agent asked. The caller’s opening utterance, summarizing what happened, leaving a voicemail — those are normal speech. You’ll see your caller speak in full sentences during the parts of the call that aren’t direct data Q&A.
Exception: embellish-into-reply custom functions
If you’ve declared a custom function with the embellish-into-reply pattern (e.g. “before every sentence, call getTime and tell the time”), the caller embeds the value inside sentences. That’s the intended behavior for this pattern — it overrides the bare-value rule for that specific function’s value.
The two rules don’t conflict because the embellish pattern is for caller-initiated value usage; the bare-value rule is for target-initiated data requests.
IVR navigation is also different
When the IVR says “press 1 for English”, the caller does NOT say “1” out loud — it invokes the press_digit built-in tool with the digit. This is the IVR Navigation Protocol, also baked into the persona. Saying digits aloud to a keypad-input prompt would just get treated as ambient speech.