Teams let each agent do one job well. The team diagram 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, for example from reception to bookings or from English to the caller's own language. The receiving agent gets a handover summary, so the caller never repeats themselves, and each agent keeps its own voice. The caller hears the next agent answer, with no hold time.
Transfers to humans
Agents also transfer callers to real phones, two ways:
- Blind: "let me put you through", then the call transfers.
- Warm (consultative): the agent rings the colleague first and briefs them privately on who is calling and why; the human accepts or declines without the caller hearing it. If the human declines, the reason is returned so the agent can take a message, book a callback or try the next person.
Out-of-hours handling is part of the agent's instructions: transfer during office hours, capture a message outside them. Once the hours are known, the Builder writes that rule into the instructions. Every transfer destination passes the outbound safety filter. See What every agent promises your callers.
Human handover: the human talks, the agent finishes the admin
After a transfer on a phone call, the colleague can key a short sequence on their handset to hand the caller back to an agent. A transcript of the human side of the call briefs that agent. Transcription is best-effort, so the agent confirms what was agreed in one sentence, then finishes the admin: books the slot, captures the details, emails the summary.
The Human hand-back section of the agent editor maps each key sequence to the agent that receives the caller; the transcript briefing can be switched off there. Hand-back works on both blind and warm transfers, on calls that arrived by phone, but not 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 receives the result while the caller stays with the current agent. Text agents work well here: a knowledge specialist answering from a knowledge base, an email drafter, a validator. A subagent call can take several seconds, so well-built agents say "let me look into that…" first. The Builder adds that instruction.
Designing a reception-and-specialists team
The classic shape: one receptionist answers, greets and routes, with a specialist behind it for each real job, each with its own voice, instructions and tools, plus a shared knowledge subagent any of them can consult. Given the departments, the Builder proposes this shape; the team can then be tested end to end before going live.
Which agents can transfer, hand back or call subagents depends on the agent type. The Builder only proposes what the design can do. See Models & platforms.