Teams let each agent be one thing done well. 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. The receiving agent gets a handover summary, so the caller never repeats themselves, and each agent keeps its own voice — the caller 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 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 comes back so the agent can pivot — 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; given the hours, the Builder 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, 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 — and the agent 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 picks the caller up; the transcript briefing can be switched off there. Hand-back works on both blind and warm transfers, on calls that arrived by phone — 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 gets the result back, while the caller stays exactly where they are. Text agents shine here — a knowledge specialist answering from a knowledge base, an email drafter, a validator. A subagent call takes a good few seconds, so well-built agents say "let me look into that…" first — the Builder writes that in.
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, prompt and tools — plus a shared knowledge subagent any of them can consult. Given a description of the departments, the Builder proposes exactly this; 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 actually do. See Models & platforms.