A cold transfer connects the caller to a human and the AI drops off; a warm transfer briefs the human first. Edesy's AI voice agent does cold transfers to named destinations, fallback chains with ring timeouts on Plivo, DTMF transfer menus and handoffs to another AI agent. It does not do warm (consult or whisper) transfers today.
We would rather say that plainly than have you find out on a live call. The rest of this post explains when the difference matters and how to get most of the benefit of a warm transfer with what is available. If your transfers are failing outright, read AI-to-human call transfers: what goes wrong first.
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The transfer types
| Transfer type | What happens | Available in Edesy |
|---|---|---|
| Cold (blind) transfer | AI connects the caller to a number and leaves | Yes, to named destinations |
| Also ring + fallback chain | Rings more than one destination, then the next on timeout | Yes, on Plivo |
| DTMF transfer menu | Caller presses a key to pick a team | Yes |
| Transfer to another AI agent | A specialist agent takes over with context | Yes (squads) |
| Warm transfer (consult) | AI talks to the human first, then joins the caller | No |
| Whisper | Human hears a private summary before connecting | No |
| SIP REFER transfer | Carrier-level transfer by SIP signalling | No |
When a cold transfer is enough
Most AI-to-human handoffs are cold in practice, even in human-only call centres. A cold transfer is fine when:
- the human's next step is the same every time, such as a sales callback, a payment query or a booking change;
- the context fits in a few fields the agent already collected (name, order number, reason);
- the human can see a screen where that context arrives at the same moment.
The third point is the important one. A warm transfer is mostly a way of getting context into the human's head. If the context reaches them another way, the gap closes.
When you would really want warm
- Sensitive calls where the caller should not have to explain twice, such as a complaint or a medical question.
- Senior escalations where the human needs to decide whether to take the call.
- Teams without a shared screen, such as a field manager on a mobile phone.
For these, use the workarounds below, or route to a callback rather than a live transfer.
How to get warm-transfer results with a cold transfer
1. Send the summary at the moment of transfer. In the agent's transfer step, also send an SMS, WhatsApp or email to the destination with the caller's name, number and reason. The human reads it as the phone rings. These are standard mid-call actions.
2. Push it to the CRM or helpdesk. A workflow on the transferred outcome can update the CRM record or post to your helpdesk through a webhook, so the ticket is open when the human picks up.
3. Tell the caller what will happen. A short line before transferring ("I am connecting you to our billing team now; I have shared your order number with them") cuts repeat questions.
4. Use a fallback chain. On Plivo, set an also-ring destination and a fallback chain with ring timeouts so an unanswered desk phone does not leave the caller in silence.
5. Offer a callback when no one is free. If every destination is busy, the agent schedules a callback at a time the caller picks and marks the call as callback scheduled. A good callback beats a long hold.
6. Keep the record. The transcript, recording and tool calls are in call history. Link it in your summary message so the human can read the whole call if they need to.
DTMF menus: let the caller choose
A DTMF transfer menu ("press 1 for sales, press 2 for support") is useful when callers already know who they want, or when speech recognition struggles on a noisy line. You can mix it with the AI: the agent answers, resolves what it can, and offers the menu only when a human is needed. See DTMF in the docs and smart IVR.
Transfer to another AI agent
Inside a squad, handing over to a specialist agent behaves much more like a warm transfer, because you choose how much context moves with the caller: the full history, a summary, only the variables, or a custom mix. The caller hears a different voice continue the same conversation. See multi-agent squads.
Set up and test
- Add named transfer destinations to the agent and say in the prompt when to use each one.
- Add a summary message (SMS, WhatsApp or email) to the transfer.
- On Plivo, configure also-ring and the fallback chain.
- Test each destination from the Test Center and on a real phone, including the "nobody answers" case. Save it as a test scenario so it runs after every prompt change.
- Check the transferred outcomes in call history daily for the first week.
Setup details are in call transfer docs, and the feature overview is on call transfers and human handoff. Start from a template; pricing is from ₹4/min on plans and credit packs, or ₹6/min pay as you go, plus telephony (pricing).
The honest summary
If you need a true consult or whisper transfer on every call today, Edesy is not the right fit for that part of your flow yet. If you need the human to know who is calling and why, a cold transfer plus a summary message, a CRM update and a fallback chain gets you most of the way, and is simpler to run.