While You Wait

Portable is developing a trauma-informed AI voice companion designed to bring calm, reassurance, and connection to people waiting for help.

Wait times are long, intake processes are inconsistent, and people in distress are often asked to repeat their story several times before receiving support.

Those moments on hold are rarely neutral. For someone seeking help, even a few minutes of waiting can heighten anxiety and uncertainty. A recent study on the use of AI and automation in crisis support services (Ma et al., 2022) found that help-seekers often require immediate, human support, particularly in moments of crisis. Being forced to navigate automation or wait too long was seen as potentially exacerbating distress, especially for suicidal individuals.

For counsellors and volunteers, the first few seconds of a call can be the hardest. A recent study (Kitchingman et al., 2025) shows that crisis counsellors may feel more stressed at the beginning of each call due to the inability to anticipate the content before answering, and the greater concentration required to assess the caller’s situation.

We saw an opportunity to design for that space: the often invisible, emotionally charged pause between reaching out and being heard. What if the time spent waiting could become a moment of care rather than increasing distress?

It offers calm, non-clinical conversation, grounding techniques, drawing on evidence-based research and current best practice offered by crisis helpline resources and gentle reassurance until the human connection begins. The American Psychological Association (APA 2025) recommends that: 

“GenAI chatbots, wellness apps that use GenAI, and digital wellness apps should not be used as a replacement for a qualified mental health care provider, but may be appropriate as a supportive adjunct, not substitute, to an ongoing therapeutic relationship.”

The system uses natural-sounding voice AI and language models to create short, supportive interactions that draw on trauma-informed communication techniques. It doesn’t diagnose or counsel; it simply holds space. The tone is warm, neutral, and safe, designed to help callers regulate distress and feel supported while they’re waiting.

This first prototype has already demonstrated strong potential for use in helpline and triage environments. It integrates an ethical safety prompt structure, tone calibration, and clear opt-in consent. When risk cues appear, the system defers entirely to a human counsellor.

Over time, While You Wait will evolve into a dual-purpose tool, supporting both callers and counsellors. A counsellor companion tool is in early development, designed to summarise key emotional cues from calls to assist counsellors with continuity of care once the conversation begins.

Helplines and digital health services can only move as fast as their human capacity allows. In practice, that means people in distress often wait, not because support isn’t available, but because systems can’t keep up with demand.

While You Wait turns that waiting gap into a space for care. It offers calm, evidence-based conversations and low-intensity interventions with a safe-AI chatbot that helps callers stay grounded and connected until a counsellor joins the line. The experience doesn’t replace human interaction; it holds the door open for it.

For services under pressure, finding ways to make that experience safer and more supportive can have far-reaching benefits.

This approach also supports counsellors. By providing brief contextual cues about mood, urgency and tone, the system can help practitioners respond more effectively and with greater empathy without adding to their workload.

But the opportunity doesn’t stop there. The same approach could extend to other moments where people need reassurance, guidance or connection before human contact is available.

Potential future applications include:

• Supporting people in telehealth and primary care waiting rooms, where anxiety or uncertainty can peak before appointments.
• Offering calm, accessible onboarding for employee assistance or wellbeing services, easing first-time engagement.
• Providing appointment booking and in-take services for people seeking mental health support while offices are closed.
• Assisting frontline responders or call centres during surge or emergency events, offering stabilising interaction before escalation, with a recent report showing Australians are open to AI supporting Triple 0 calls.

We see While You Wait as a supportive intervention; a carefully-designed addition to service ecosystems that helps people feel held rather than forgotten. Today it’s being built for mental health helplines; tomorrow, it could sit anywhere empathy meets a queue.

Rather than delivering a fixed recommendation, we worked alongside the SWAM team to test assumptions, compare trade-offs, and refine each option based on internal feedback. This iterative approach allowed for real-time course corrections, for instance, reevaluating requirements around stakeholder access when a broader external user base was introduced.

What mattered most in this phase was giving the team decision-making confidence. Each option was contextualised with pros and cons, implementation effort, and long-term considerations helping internal stakeholders align around a clear direction without surprises down the track.We’re now seeking mental health and telehealth partners, funders, and researchers to help us test and evaluate the product in live service settings.

Our goals for the next stage are to:

• Prototype the handover moment between the AI and a human counsellor, ensuring safe and accurate transfer of tone, cues and context.
• Refine the opt-in experience, so callers can easily choose whether to engage with the AI companion.
• Test the technology in collaboration with helplines and crisis services.
• Co-design a shared ethical framework to guide safe deployment.

We believe While You Wait can become a valuable new layer of support in Australia’s mental health ecosystem, one that respects the limits of technology, amplifies the strengths of human care, and helps more people feel less alone in the moments that matter.

If you’re interested in partnering, piloting or funding this next stage, we’d love to hear from you.