The four reasons a transfer happens
| Reason | What triggered it | Where it's controlled |
|---|---|---|
| Caller asked for a human | The caller said something like "let me talk to someone" or "is there a person there?" | Settings → AI Voice → Call Handling → Transfer to Human toggle + Transfer Phone Number |
| After-hours forward | Call came in outside your business hours and your after-hours mode is set to forward | Settings → Inbound Call Settings → After-Hours Behavior = forward, plus the after-hours forwarding number |
| Emergency / clinical rule | The AI detected an emergency pattern defined in your clinical rules (e.g., suicidal ideation, knocked-out tooth, cauda equina symptoms) | Settings → AI Voice → Clinical Rules (review queue + active rules) |
| System error | The call pipeline hit an error mid-conversation and the AI fell back to the transfer number rather than dropping the caller | Same setting as "Caller asked for a human" — the transfer number is the fallback destination |
If Transfer to Human is off or the transfer number is blank, the first two reasons fall back to taking a message instead of bridging.
What the caller hears
Cold transfer, today. The AI says a short handoff line — typically something like "One moment, I'll connect you to the team" — and then dials your transfer number. There's no whisper or announce step before the bridge.
If you want the AI to read the caller's name and reason to your staff before connecting, that's not currently available. Tell us if it matters to you and we'll prioritize it.
"Escalated" in Tasks is different from a mid-call transfer
The Tasks → Escalations bucket is populated by post-call analysis. The AI handled the conversation to the end, but our sentiment analysis flagged it as needing human follow-up — usually because the caller sounded frustrated, the request couldn't be resolved fully, or the AI took a message it judged urgent.
These are calls to follow up on, not calls that were transferred during the call.
Tightening or loosening the rules
Too many transfers?
- Turn off Transfer to Human entirely. The AI will take messages for anything it can't resolve.
- Change After-Hours Behavior from
forwardtomessageorvoicemail. - Review your active clinical rules and disable any that are over-triggering.
Not enough transfers?
- Turn on Transfer to Human and fill in the transfer number.
- Set After-Hours Behavior to
forwardso anyone calling outside hours gets a person. - Switch the after-hours mode to
emergency-onlyif you only want clinical emergencies to reach a human at night.
See Set call routing and forwarding for the full routing matrix and Configure after-hours behavior for night/weekend specifics.