They occur more often than you might think. Yes, I'm talking about your smart speaker. At first, my relationship with Google Home got off to a rocky start, but it did eventually get better (after many, many feature updates, like scheduled commands, home and away awareness and adding Apple Music). But that doesn't mean I don't occasionally experience a breakdown in communication. I just happen to know of some tools to help fix the problem.
For example, if you have more than one Google Home speaker in your house, I'm sure it's happened where the speaker you're talking to ignores you while a different one in another room entirely tries to respond, right? That's fixable. So is the worst smart speaker communication issue of all -- when Google Home says, "Sorry, I don't understand."