A single agent that does everything ends up mediocre at all of it. Teams let each agent be one thing done well — and the team graph draws the two kinds of collaboration distinctly, because they feel completely different to a caller.
Transfers: the caller moves
A transfer hands the live call to another voice agent — reception to bookings, English to the caller's own language, a calm specialist for an upset caller. The receiving agent gets a handover summary, so the caller never repeats themselves, and each agent keeps its own voice — a caller genuinely hears a new colleague pick up, with zero hold time.
Transfers to humans
Agents also transfer callers to real phones, two ways:
- Blind — "let me put you through", and the call simply goes.
- Warm (consultative) — the agent rings your colleague first and briefs them privately on who's calling and why; the human accepts or declines without the caller hearing a word of it. While that happens the agent can keep the caller honestly posted, and a gentle comfort tone covers any gap. If the human declines, the reason comes back so the agent can pivot usefully — take a message, book a callback, or try the next person on the list.
Out-of-hours handling is part of the agent's instructions: transfer during office hours, capture a message outside them. Tell the Builder your hours and it writes the switch in. Every transfer destination passes the outbound safety filter — see What every agent promises your callers.
Hand-back: the human talks, the agent does the paperwork
After a transfer on a phone call, your colleague can key a short sequence on their handset to hand the caller back to the agent. A speaker-labelled transcript of the human side of the call briefs the agent — transcription is best-effort, so the agent confirms what was agreed in one sentence before finishing the admin: books the slot, captures the details, emails the summary. Your team does the human part; nobody types up the call afterwards.
Hand-back is for calls that arrived by phone — it isn't available on browser calls.
Subagents: quiet helpers
A subagent is an agent used like a tool: the front agent asks it a question mid-call and gets the result back, while the caller stays exactly where they are. Text agents shine here — a knowledge specialist answering from your knowledge base, an email drafter, a validator checking a reference number. A subagent call takes a good few seconds, so well-built agents say "let me look into that…" first — the Builder writes that in for you.
Designing a reception-and-specialists team
The classic shape: one receptionist answers everything, greets, and routes — with a specialist behind it for each real job (bookings, support, sales), each with its own voice, prompt and tools, plus a shared knowledge subagent any of them can consult. Describe your departments to the Builder and it will propose exactly this, then test it end to end before you go live.
Which agents can transfer, hand back or call subagents depends on the agent type — the Builder only proposes what the design can actually do, so teams built in conversation come out wired correctly. See Models & platforms.