TL;DR
- Audio latency is the pause between a guest finishing a sentence and the AI beginning to reply. The guest hears it at the speaker, on your network, at your peak.
- The delay is the sum of every step in the exchange, from capturing the sound to playing the reply, plus the network in between.
- Hi Auto processes 100M+ orders per year with 93%+ completion and 96% accuracy. Its average response time is 1.52 seconds and its greeting typically lands within 3 to 5 seconds, across more than 1,000 stores.
- Ask every vendor how their number is defined, then measure it yourself in a pilot: at the speaker, at peak and off-peak, across many stores.
A car pulls up to the order point. The guest says hello, and nothing comes back. A second passes. The guest says hello again, a little louder, and that is exactly when the reply arrives. Both voices collide, and the visit starts on the wrong foot.
That pause is audio latency: the delay between a guest finishing speaking and the AI beginning to respond. Guests experience it as silence, then doubt about whether anyone heard them.
The glossary defines the term. This guide covers the method: where the seconds go, why they matter in a lane, and how to measure them in a pilot before you sign anything.
Where do the seconds go in a voice exchange?
Every spoken reply passes through five steps. None of them is instant.
- Sound is captured at the speaker. The microphone picks up the guest’s voice outdoors, alongside engines, wind and passengers.
- Speech is recognized. The audio becomes words, whatever the accent, and whoever else is talking.
- The conversation is understood. The system works out what the guest means, including changes like “actually, make that a large.”
- The reply is prepared. This is where inference time sits: the AI model’s processing step that turns understanding into an answer.
- The reply is played back. The audio travels through the speaker to the guest.
The guest feels the sum of all five, plus the network in between. That is why response time is an end-to-end number. Inference time alone will always look smaller than what the guest hears.
The network deserves a second look. A store on a busy connection at Saturday noon behaves differently from a test room on a dedicated line. A benchmark that ignores the store’s real network is measuring a different system from the one your guests will use.
Why do a few seconds matter in a lane?
A slow reply breaks the conversation in three ways.
- Talk-over. The guest fills the silence, two voices overlap, and the exchange has to restart.
- Repeated words. A guest who is unsure they were heard says it again. That adds turns, and turns add time at the speaker.
- A longer visit. An order is made of several exchanges: the greeting, the items, any changes, the confirmation. A small delay in each one stacks up across the visit.
Independent data adds context. In Intouch Insight’s 2026 Drive-Thru Study (mystery shops in June and July 2026), guests at locations of three national QSR brands running voice AI had to repeat part of their order on 29.1% of visits, against 20.4% for the same brands in the main study. The study does not say what caused the difference, and latency is only one possible factor. These are independent industry findings, measured differently from Hi Auto’s numbers, and are not Hi Auto results.
The first moment also sets the tone. Greet time, the wait before a guest hears anything, is what they notice first.
The benefit reaches the crew too. When the speaker handles the order, attention moves to the window and the food. Here is how one store manager described it:
“Now that we have her and she does everything for us, we’re able to say okay let’s get the order out let’s get the bag to beat the car, so it helps out a lot with her.”
Linda Ronda, Store GM, Checkers. Hi Auto customer video, 2025.
What are Hi Auto’s reference numbers?
Use these as a calibration point for your own pilot. They are Hi Auto’s figures, measured across more than 1,000 live stores.
- 93%+ completion and 96% accuracy, reported together.
- Average response time: 1.52 seconds.
- Greeting: typically within 3 to 5 seconds.
Speed on its own tells you little. A system that answers quickly and mishears the order has just created a faster problem. That is why every speed claim should sit next to accuracy, measured across the same stores. Ask any vendor for both.
Where processing happens is a fair question too. If your infrastructure team is weighing cloud-based AI against local processing, put the question to every vendor you evaluate.
The most useful question is also the simplest: how is your response time defined? What is the start point, what is the stop point, and how many stores and orders sit behind it? Every published figure deserves that question, and that includes Hi Auto’s.
How do you benchmark audio latency in a pilot?
Vendor numbers look tidy on a slide. The real test is Friday at noon, on your connection, with a full car at the speaker. Here is a six-step plan your IT team can run in any pilot.
- Agree the start and stop points in writing. Decide exactly when the clock starts and when it stops before the pilot begins. If a vendor cannot state this clearly, you have learned something already.
- Measure at the speaker, not in a lab. Server logs show what happens inside the system. The guest hears what arrives at the speaker. Time what the guest hears.
- Test at peak and off-peak, on the store’s real network. A system that feels quick on a quiet Tuesday morning can behave differently in the lunch rush. Test both.
- Sample many stores and many orders. One store over one week will not show you how the system holds up across a chain. Reliability at scale shows up only in a wide sample.
- Look at the slowest responses, not only the average. Ask for the slowest 5% of responses (the 95th percentile). Those are the pauses guests remember.
- Compare against the average across all live stores. A best-store number tells you what is possible. The all-store average tells you what to expect.
The plan needs only an agreed definition, a stopwatch mindset and a fair sample.
What should you ask a vendor, and what are the red flags?
Before you approve a pilot, get clear answers to these four questions.
- How is your response time defined? Ask for the start and stop points in writing. The same words can describe very different measurements.
- Where does processing happen? The answer shapes how the system behaves when a store’s connection slows.
- What happens on a slow or interrupted connection? Ask what the guest actually hears when connectivity drops.
- What do you report across all live stores? Ask for the fleet-wide average and how many orders it covers.
Watch for these red flags:
- A single “up to” number with no definition behind it
- A lab-only result with no field data from real stores at real peak hours
- Speed quoted without accuracy
- No clear start and stop points
The last part of the picture is how uncertain moments are handled. Hi Auto’s product page describes how Hi Auto handles those moments: the AI handles the order, and when it cannot confidently determine what the guest wants, a trained Hi Auto supervisor resolves it instantly through the platform. Every one of those moments is used to train the model further, and the process is seamless to the guest and the restaurant. This also sits alongside noise handling, which a busy lane tests every day.
Measure what the guest hears
Here is the standard worth holding every vendor to: the only audio latency number that matters is the one a guest experiences at the speaker, on the store’s real network, at the store’s real peak, across the vendor’s full set of live stores.
Lab numbers show what is possible under good conditions. They cannot tell you what a guest hears at lunch in your busiest store. That is the number to have in hand before a chain-wide decision, and it is fair to hold Hi Auto to it too.
Benchmark Hi Auto in your own pilot
Hi Auto’s Buyer’s Guide includes an evaluation matrix your team can use to compare vendors on field performance. Read the Buyer’s Guide, then talk to the Hi Auto team about what response time looks like across more than 1,000 live stores.