Transfer calls to people

Some calls need a person: a caller who asks for one, a complaint the agent shouldn’t handle, a sale that’s ready to close. A transfer hands the live call from the AI to one of your people without the caller hanging up and dialling again — and hands over what the AI already learned, so the caller doesn’t repeat themselves. If nobody picks up, the agent is told and carries on the conversation instead of the call ringing out.

How a transfer works

A transfer has two halves that you configure in different places:

• When to transfer is the AI’s decision. You describe it in plain language on a Transfer node, and the AI calls the transfer when the conversation matches.
• Where the call goes is never the AI’s decision. It’s a destination or a destination group you set up in advance — the AI can’t invent a number or pick someone you didn’t list.

The Transfer node attaches to an agent like any other function node. Its When should the AI transfer? field is the description the model reads, and it matters as much as the prompt: “Use when the caller asks for a person, or wants to change an existing contract” transfers the right calls; “when needed” transfers too many.

Warm and cold transfers

In a warm transfer the AI tells your colleague who is calling and why, in a couple of sentences, then connects the caller. The briefing is capped at one minute.

What the caller hears

What the caller hears during a transfer is the same on every node, so you don’t have to design it:

1. Before dialling — a short line in the flow’s language, such as “Connecting you now, please hold.”
2. While it rings — the AI keeps talking with the caller, so a wait never sounds like a dropped line. If nobody answers, the agent is told and continues the conversation.
3. During a warm briefing — the caller hears a hold tone while the AI briefs your colleague.

The handoff case

Every transfer carries a short case file to the person who picks up, so they start with context instead of “how can I help you?”:

The AI fills the case when it calls the transfer. Mark a field required and the AI asks the caller for it before transferring — useful when your team can’t do anything without, say, an account number. People taking the call in the dashboard or the app see the case on the incoming-call screen.

Where a transfer can go

On the Transfer node, Who should get the call? has three tabs:

Destinations and destination groups are set up once for the whole account, in Settings → People & numbers, and picked by name on the node. Owners, admins and members can see them; owners and admins add, change and delete them.

Destinations

A destination is one place a call can go:

Emergency and special-service numbers, and premium-rate or shared-cost numbers, can’t be phone destinations.

A destination can be disabled without deleting it; disabled destinations are skipped when a group rings.

Destination groups

A destination group is a named set of destinations that ring together as one transfer target — “Support desk” made of two phone numbers and the people in the dashboard, for instance. Everyone in the group rings at once and the first to answer gets the call. For each member you set how long it rings, and for the group a Give up after time after which the transfer counts as unanswered.

Groups are the usual target: they let you change who picks up — add a number, swap a person — without editing and republishing any flow.

Call from

A transfer to a phone number is a new outgoing call, placed from one of your numbers. Call from on the node (or on the phone destination) picks which one; by default it’s the number the caller dialled. The number’s provider carries that leg. Calls that didn’t arrive on one of your numbers — browser test calls, for example — need a Call from number to transfer to a phone.

Managing destinations by API

Destinations and destination groups are account resources with their own endpoints, so you can keep them in sync with your own staff directory. They use the transfers API key scope — read to list, write to change:

• GET /transfers/destinations, POST, PUT and DELETE /transfers/destinations/{id}
• GET /transfers/destination-groups, POST, PUT and DELETE /transfers/destination-groups/{id}

Teams: routing to the right people

In a team (organization) account, each member can carry tags — sales, billing, turkish — and optional available hours. Both are set per member on the Team page (a member’s row → Tags and available hours) or by API. Tags are set by owners and admins; hours by the member themselves or an owner or admin.

Tags and hours belong to the organization, not to one account: a member has the same tags and hours in every account the organization owns. A personal account has no members to tag, so a transfer limited to tags rings nobody there.

• Tags are short labels, normalized as you save them: lowercased, spaces turned into -. Allowed are a–z, the Turkish letters ı ğ ü ş ö ç, digits, - and _, up to 32 characters. A member can carry up to 20.
• Available hours are a weekly schedule in the member’s time zone — for each weekday, up to six time ranges such as 09:00–18:00. A range never crosses midnight; an overnight shift is two ranges on two days (22:00–24:00, then 00:00–06:00 the next day). Hours follow the local clock, so 09:00–18:00 stays 09:00–18:00 across daylight-saving changes. A member with no hours set is always within hours.

A transfer to people in the dashboard can be limited to certain tags. When it rings, it rings only members who are:

1. able to take a call right now — Ring in this browser on in an open dashboard tab, Team status Available, and not already on a transferred call (see Two switches decide whether you ring),
2. carrying one of the tags, and
3. within their available hours, if they set any.

If nobody matches, nobody is rung and the transfer fails as if nobody answered. It never falls back to ringing everyone.

Let the AI pick the team

Pick one team under Your team and the node rings that team. Add a second team and the AI picks one of them from the conversation — up to 8 teams. Once there is more than one, each team needs a short description the AI reads to decide, such as “Internet, modem or line problems.”

Talkif rings the chosen team’s available members within their hours. If nobody in it answers, the agent is told and continues the conversation.

Managing tags and hours by API

Member tags and available hours have their own endpoints, next to the destinations, so you can keep teams and shifts in sync with your staff directory or rota:

• GET /transfers/members — every member with their user ID, name, role, tags, hours and availability. The user ID is what a People in the dashboard destination lists in userIds.
• GET /transfers/member-tags — the tags in use, with how many members carry each.
• GET / PUT /transfers/members/{memberId}/tags — read or replace a member’s tags.
• GET / PUT / DELETE /transfers/members/{memberId}/hours — read, set or remove a member’s available hours.
• GET / PUT /transfers/members/{memberId}/availability — read or set a member’s Team status (available, away, offline, optionally until a time).

They use the transfers API key scope — read for GET, write for the rest — and follow the same rules as the dashboard: owners and admins set tags; hours are set by the member or an owner or admin; and an owner or admin can set a member away or offline, but back to available only if the member didn’t turn calls off themselves. On a personal account the lists are empty.

When nobody answers

There’s nothing to connect. When a transfer doesn’t go through — busy, declined, unanswered, or nobody available — the agent that started it is told that nobody answered and continues the conversation. A good prompt for that agent says what to offer then: a callback, or taking a message.

If your person hangs up within the first 15 seconds after being connected — a misdial, a dropped line — the agent comes back to the caller, apologizes, and offers to help or take a message, instead of leaving the caller in silence.

Some calls can’t be transferred. A transfer on such a call fails the same way, so the agent carries on with the caller.

A call can be offered to people at most twice. After that, a further transfer to people fails straight away and the agent carries on, so a caller isn’t put through the same ringing again.

Set up a transfer

Next