Transferring to a human
Set up where calls can go, decide when the agent should hand off, and make the hand-off feel seamless.
The best AI agents know their limits. A clean transfer to a person is a good outcome — far better than an agent improvising its way through something it can't handle.
Set up the destinations
On the agent, add the numbers it's allowed to transfer to, each with a label describing who's on the end: "Front desk", "Billing", "Spanish speaker", "On-call technician". The agent routes by those labels, so name them for what the caller needs rather than for your internal org chart.
Give one destination the default label. That's where anything unmatched goes, and it means a caller who needs a person always reaches one.
Warm or cold
Cold transfer connects the caller straight through. Fast, and fine when the receiving person can pick up context from the caller.
Warm transfer briefs the person first, then connects. It costs a few seconds and is almost always worth it — the caller doesn't repeat themselves, and your colleague isn't answering blind. Use warm transfers for anything sensitive, anything a caller has already explained at length, and anything where the caller is already frustrated.
Warm transfer needs an upgraded voice plan
Turning warm transfer on shows a note saying it's an Enterprise feature of the underlying voice platform. If your account isn't on that tier, the switch still saves but the briefing leg won't run — so confirm it works on a test call before you rely on it. Warm transfer also needs a proxy number, and when you're on your own carrier account that number has to sit in the same Twilio account as the rest of your numbers.
Cold transfer
Straight through
- Fastest — no pause before connecting.
- Fine when the receiving person can pick up context quickly.
- The caller may have to repeat themselves.
Warm transfer
Briefed first
- Your colleague knows who's calling and why before they speak.
- Right for anything sensitive, lengthy, or already frustrating.
- Costs a few seconds of hold time.
When the agent should hand off
Write these into the agent's instructions explicitly. The usual list:
- The caller asks for a person. Immediately, without a fight. Nothing damages trust faster than an AI that won't let you through.
- The caller is upset. Escalate early — an agent trying to placate someone angry makes it worse.
- Regulated or high-stakes questions — clinical, legal, financial advice.
- Anything involving money the agent can't confirm — refunds, disputes, custom pricing.
- The agent has failed twice. If it hasn't understood after two attempts, a third won't help.
In a Pathway, each of these can be an explicit branch to a Transfer Call step, which makes the policy reviewable rather than implicit.
Making it feel seamless
- Say what's happening. "Let me put you through to our billing team — one moment." Silence during a transfer feels like a dropped call.
- Set expectations if there's a wait. Better to say it than to let the caller wonder.
- Have a fallback for nobody answering. Out of hours, or when the line is busy, the agent should offer to take a message or book a callback rather than dumping the caller into a void. Build that path deliberately.
After hours
Transfers only work when someone is there. Decide what happens outside business hours: take a detailed message, book a callback, or route to an on-call number. An agent that says "let me transfer you" at 11pm and reaches a dead line is worse than one that offers to have someone call back in the morning.
If you'd rather your existing line handle daytime calls and ClearTalk pick up the overflow, forwarding works the other way round too — your business number can forward to an agent only when nobody answers.
Watch the transfers
Transferred calls are worth reviewing regularly. A rising transfer rate on one topic is your agent telling you exactly what to improve next — usually a missing knowledge base article, a missing branch, or an objection nobody wrote a response for.