What a transfer does
A transfer hands the live call to a human. The caller stays on the line, the Finn steps aside, and the conversation continues with a person. Transfers are configured as an Action node inside a workflow, or triggered from free-form mode when the Finn decides escalation is needed.
Two shapes:
| Type | What the caller hears | What the human hears |
|---|---|---|
| Cold | "Connecting you now" then ringing | An incoming call with no context |
| Warm | Hold or continued conversation while the human is reached | A spoken or written summary before the caller is bridged |
Cold is the default. Warm requires the Finn to brief the destination first, which adds hold time for the caller.
Configuring the action
In the workflow editor, drag an Action node onto the canvas and choose Transfer Call. Connect it from the node where escalation should happen.
You set the destination number on the node. Destinations are typically a human's mobile, an office line, or a queue. You can interpolate variables into the destination or the handoff message:
Transferring {{contact.name}} to the on-call team.
Reason: severity {{state.severity}}.
Variables resolve the same way they do elsewhere in a workflow. {{contact.*}} comes from the audience row, {{state.*}} from data the Finn collected earlier in this call. A typo in the variable name renders the literal {{state.x}} string in the handoff, so check the name against the Ask node that saved it. See Variables.
Decision-driven transfers
Transfers are most useful behind a Decision node. The urgent-care intake pattern is the canonical example:
- Ask for symptom severity, save to
severity. - Decision node:
severity >= 8branches to the transfer. - Everything below 8 continues to booking.
That gives you a deterministic escalation rule instead of hoping the model chooses to escalate. If you find yourself telling the Finn "you must transfer when X" in the prompt and it keeps missing, that is the signal to move the rule into a workflow Decision node.
Free-form escalation
You do not need a workflow to transfer. In free-form mode, describe the escalation condition in the Finn's Identity and give it a transfer destination. This is looser. The model decides, so it will sometimes transfer when it should not and sometimes hold on when it should hand off.
For inbound, always leave an easy "I'd like a human" path. Some callers hang up the moment they hear AI, and a caller who has to argue with an agent to reach a person is a complaint waiting to happen. See Inbound routing.
What goes wrong
The destination does not pick up. This is the most common transfer failure. The human side is busy, off-shift, or the number is wrong. Configure a fallback: send the call back to voicemail, or back to the Finn to take a message. Without a fallback, the caller is dropped.
Transfer happens too early. If the transfer node sits before the Ask nodes that collect context, the human receives a call with nothing attached. Put the transfer after the data collection you actually need, unless the whole point of the branch is speed (severity 8+ should not wait for a full intake).
Transfer volume is higher than expected. Inbound receptionist patterns typically transfer 15-30% of calls, tier-1 support 25-40%. If you are well above that, the usual cause is knowledge base gaps. The Finn cannot answer, so it escalates. Audit the top caller questions against your knowledge base before blaming the transfer logic.
The call ends instead of transferring. Check that the Action node is actually connected on the branch you think it is. An unconnected node is silently skipped.
Tracking transfers
Give each transfer branch its own End node. Each End node becomes a separate category in analytics, so "Ended with transfer" is countable rather than buried inside a generic completion. See Call outcomes and Call logs.
Testing
Test on Call, not Test on Chat. A chat simulator cannot dial a real destination, so the only way to confirm a transfer works end to end is to run a real call and answer at the destination. Do this before launching, and re-test whenever the destination number changes.
Not yet settled
Warm transfer summary delivery (spoken briefing versus screen pop versus SMS) is not documented in the current platform reference. Confirm the behavior on a test call before you rely on a specific form. There is no documented API endpoint for configuring transfer destinations. Transfer setup is done in the workflow editor in the dashboard.