A transfer is when your agent hands a live caller off to a real person — your support lead, your billing department, you, or anyone else with a phone. You configure transfers under Optimize → Transfer Calls.
This article covers transfers your agent makes during a call. For what happens when your agent is unavailable (outside business hours, or in a failure scenario), see Setting your agent's schedule and failover in Going Live & Call Routing. That's a different feature, even though both involve sending a caller elsewhere.
Turning transfers on
The page opens with a master toggle: Enable agent to transfer calls. When it's off, your agent never transfers, even if a caller asks for a person.
Transfer destinations
A transfer destination is a person or team your agent can hand a caller off to. You can have up to 4 destinations total — 3 custom destinations plus 1 default that's always present.
Each custom destination has:
Name — who the destination is (e.g., "Billing Department," "Sales Lead").
Use When Asked About — the condition that triggers this destination (e.g., "asks about a refund," "wants to talk to sales"). Your agent uses this to decide which destination matches the caller's intent.
Phone Number — a US 10-digit phone number. International numbers and short codes aren't supported.
Custom rules are evaluated in the order they were created (the UI doesn't currently support drag-to-reorder), and the first rule whose condition matches the caller wins. If nothing matches, the default takes over.
The default destination
The default is always present, can't be deleted, and is shown last. It catches callers whose request doesn't match any custom rule. It has a name and a phone number, but no condition — it's a catch-all by design.
A separate toggle, Allow transfers to default destination on caller request or when needed, lets your agent offer the default whenever a caller explicitly asks for a person, even if no custom condition matched. With it off, transfers only happen when a custom rule matches.
Make sure the default has a working phone number — transfers to it will fail otherwise.
Cold vs. warm transfer
Pick a transfer style that applies to all destinations:
Cold transfer — your agent connects the caller and hangs up. The caller hears ringing until the destination answers or the call drops.
Warm transfer — your agent stays on the line, briefly tells the destination who's calling and why, then bridges the caller in.
Warm transfers come with two extra options:
Human Detection — only complete the transfer if a person answers (not a voicemail or auto-attendant).
On-hold music — what the caller hears while waiting. Options are None, Relaxing Sound, Uplifting Beats, or Ringtone.
Timeout
The transfer timeout is global — it applies to every destination. It sets how many seconds your agent (or the caller, on a cold transfer) waits for the destination to pick up before giving up. The range is 1 to 60 seconds. If the destination doesn't answer in time, the call returns to your agent.