The SIP Transfer tool lets the agent hand a live call to a person on a real phone number. The agent decides when, based on the conversation: the issue is too complex, or the caller asks for a human. For a hand-off where a teammate joins from the Dashboard instead of a phone, use Human Handoff. See the Node reference.

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Before you start

Phone transfers dial out on one of your workspace’s outbound trunks, the ones under Phone in the dashboard. Add an outbound trunk there first, or ask a workspace admin to.

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Add it

Tools are added in Advanced; in Simple, the Tools step’s Open in Advanced takes you there.
  1. Open Components on the right rail and click SIP Transfer under Tools.
  2. Connect its output dot to the Persona, or to the Skill that is allowed to transfer.
  3. Select the node and add the phone numbers.

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Settings

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How it works

When the agent decides to transfer, it tells the caller to hold and dials the number. With one number, that is the only choice. With several, the agent names the label it wants (its tool lists the labels as departments), so give each entry a clear label such as Billing or Sales and say in the Skill’s Instruction which label is for what: “Transfer billing disputes to Billing and everything else to Reception.” A label the agent gets wrong is refused and it is told the available ones. What happens next depends on Transfer type:
  • Join the call. The person who answers joins the call and the agent goes quiet. The agent stays on the line, so the whole call keeps its recording and transcript. The person hears the caller straight away, with no introduction.
  • Brief them first. The caller hears hold music while the agent calls the person on a separate line. When they answer, the agent tells them who is waiting and why, from the conversation so far, and answers their questions. When they agree, they join the caller and the agent goes quiet. If nobody answers, the person declines or hangs up, or voicemail picks up, the hold music stops and the agent tells the caller nobody is free and keeps helping. With Leave a voicemail first, it leaves a short message on the voicemail before that. The briefing itself is not recorded; the call is, from the moment the person joins.
  • Hand the call over. Your phone carrier moves the call to the number (a SIP REFER) and the agent drops off. The recording and transcript stop at the handover. Your carrier must allow call transfers (SIP REFER) on the trunk; on Twilio, turn on Call Transfer (SIP REFER) in the trunk’s settings. A test call in the Playground or through a share link is not a phone line, so it joins the person into the call instead.
The agent does not take the call back when the person hangs up after joining. The trunk is looked up each time you publish, and for each Playground call. If it is removed, or a second outbound trunk is added while the node is on Automatic, the publish log warns that the transfer will not dial, and the agent tells callers a transfer is not available until you pick a trunk and publish again.

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Use cases

  • Escalate when the issue is beyond the agent.
  • Route to a specialist line by topic.
  • Let callers opt out to a person at any time.