Introducing warm transfer

The transfer is where most phone AI falls over.

A caller explains their situation to an agent, then gets blind-fired at a mobile that rings out to voicemail. Or you pick up with no idea who is on the line or what they want, and spend the first minute of the call catching up.

Warm transfer handles that hand-off with some manners. The agent answers, works out what the caller needs, and if it needs you, it checks with you first.

How it works

1. The agent answers your number and handles the call as normal: questions, lookups, bookings.
2. When it decides you're needed (you set the rules for when), it rings you while the caller waits. Your phone shows the call coming from your own business number, so you recognise it.
3. Before anything is connected, you hear a short announcement: "You have a call from Jack about a coffee order. Press 1 to take it, or hang up."
4. Press 1 and the agent tells the caller you're ready for them, then joins the two calls.
5. Can't take it? Hang up or ignore it. The agent tells the caller you'll ring them back, takes their details and their message, and sends it through to you.

The caller is never stranded. Worst case, they leave a message with an assistant that listened to them, instead of a voicemail box.

Why press 1

Most platforms decide whether a human answered using answering machine detection: the carrier listens to the first couple of seconds of audio and guesses "human" or "machine". A quiet "hello" reads as a machine, and a real answer gets treated like voicemail.

We built this on a press-1 screen instead. Voicemail can pick up a call; it can't press 1. The agent only connects the caller once you press it, so a transfer either reaches a person who chose to take it, or falls back to a message. No guessing in between.

I use it as my own gatekeeper

My inbound calls go to an executive assistant called Indi. She answers, finds out who's calling and why, and rings me with who it is and what they want. If it's worth my time I press 1 and I'm talking to the caller. If it's not, the caller leaves a message with Indi and I read it later.

She has also blocked my wife several times when she called to ask about dinner plans!

There's a setting for that. Every caller has a profile, and flipping "Route straight to a human" on it means calls from that number skip Indi and ring me directly the moment they connect. My wife's number has it switched on now. Domestic harmony restored.

You can watch a real call end to end, from Indi answering through to the press-1 hand-off, in the demo video on LinkedIn.

Turning it on

Warm transfer is one toggle on the transfer action.

You choose the number, the name the agent announces, the press-1 message, and how long to ring before giving up and taking a message instead.

Point it at whatever answers a phone: a mobile, a sales line, a call centre queue, or an extension on the PBX you already run. Switch the toggle off and you get a plain blind transfer instead.

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VerticalAI is a voice AI provider in Perth, Western Australia. We build phone agents that answer every call, handle the routine ones end to end, and warm-transfer the callers who need you. If you want one answering your number, get in touch.

Email us at: hello@verticalai.com.au

Visit our website at: https://verticalai.com.au