Concurrency is the ability of a system to handle multiple operations or calls simultaneously. For AI voice agents, concurrency determines how many conversations can occur at the same time without degradation in performance or quality.
How does concurrency work?
Voice AI platforms allocate computational resources to handle parallel conversations. Each active call requires processing power for speech recognition, language model inference, and speech synthesis. The system’s concurrency limit depends on available infrastructure and how efficiently resources are managed.
Why does concurrency matter?
Unlike human agents who handle one call at a time, AI agents can scale to hundreds of simultaneous conversations. High concurrency means no caller waits in queue during busy periods. However, exceeding concurrency limits degrades response times or causes call failures, so capacity planning is essential.
Concurrency in practice
A tax preparation service expects 10x normal call volume during filing season. They provision their AI voice agent for 200 concurrent calls to handle the peak without queuing. Real-time monitoring tracks actual concurrency, automatically scaling resources up or down as demand fluctuates throughout the day.