What is Live Handoff?
Live Handoff lets a caller reach a human at any point in a call. You don’t place it at a particular step — once it’s enabled, the assistant listens for a request to speak to a person (“can I talk to someone?”, “put me through to a human”) on every conversation step it’s active on, anywhere in the script. When it hears one, it offers to transfer, confirms the caller wants it, and then transfers the call to a routing endpoint — with hold music for the caller and, on a warm transfer, a private briefing for the team member before the two are connected. Live Handoff works on phone calls and on browser calls. On a browser call the team member is dialled on one of your team’s phone numbers and joined to the caller, with the audio converted between web and phone quality automatically. The number is worked out once at the start of the call — the script’s number, then your team’s default, then any of your team’s numbers — and if none of them can be used the handoff fails cleanly onto your Failure Message rather than dialling with a broken caller ID. Live Handoff is configured per script under: Scripts → (your script) → Settings → Live Handoff The section is a card described as “Configure handoff defaults, flow overrides, and availability windows”. Live Handoff is the right tool when a transfer can be requested anywhere. When a specific step in your flow should transfer the caller — “let me put you through to bookings now” — place the Warm Handoff tool at that step instead. And when the caller should simply end up at a different part of the same script, with nothing dialled, use Intent Pathways.What happens on a call
- The caller asks for a human. On each caller turn, the assistant checks whether the caller has asked to speak to a person. This happens on every conversation step unless you have excluded that step (see Step overrides).
- Availability is checked. The configured routing endpoint is resolved through its schedule at that moment. If it’s closed, the assistant apologises with a natural out-of-hours line — for example “Sorry, none of the team are currently available right now.” — the conversation continues, and handoff offers are suppressed for the rest of the call. Live Handoff needs a routing endpoint configured to do anything — without one, a request for a human isn’t acted on.
- The assistant offers, then confirms. If the endpoint is open, the assistant offers the transfer in its own words — for example “Sure, I can try connecting you with someone now if you like?” (the phrasing varies between calls). It then listens for the caller’s reply, judged on meaning rather than exact wording. A yes — or a few seconds of silence — starts the transfer; a no resumes the conversation exactly where it left off.
- The transfer runs. The caller hears your chosen hold music while the endpoint’s destination is dialled. On a Warm transfer the assistant privately briefs the team member with a summary of the call, then merges the two and bows out; on a Cold transfer the caller is put straight through. The full transfer experience — staging, briefing, merge, and what each party hears — is described on Transferring calls. A connected transfer gets a fresh 30-minute time allowance, so a long human conversation is never cut short by the script’s Max Call Duration.
- If the transfer fails — no answer, busy, or the team member’s voicemail picks up (which the assistant detects before the caller hears it) — the assistant speaks your Failure Message and the conversation returns to the step the caller left off at. What went wrong is recorded in the handoff outcome variables so your script can react to it.
Turning it on
The top bar of the Live Handoff section holds the master switch and the hold audio:Destination
The Destination card carries a single field: Routing Endpoint. This is where the caller goes — and it also decides when they can go. A routing endpoint bundles a destination (a team member, phone number, or SIP address), an availability schedule, and a fallback, all managed on the Numbers & Routing page. SIP destinations are set up with the Voxworks team, not self-serve — see SIP Trunking & BYO Carrier.- The picker lists your endpoints sorted by location, each row showing the endpoint name, its department and destination, and a live status dot — green for open, grey for closed. Selecting an endpoint shows it with its location and department alongside.
- Each row has an open-link icon that jumps straight to that endpoint on the Numbers & Routing page.
- If you have no endpoints yet, the field reads “No routing endpoints configured yet. Create one on the Numbers & Routing page.”
- If a selected endpoint is later deleted, a warning appears: “The selected routing endpoint no longer exists. Pick another one.” If the endpoint has a configuration problem, the picker flags it and notes that transfers will follow the endpoint’s fallback.
Use variable — below the picker, this toggle swaps the fixed endpoint for a variable expression, so the destination can differ per call. Type
/ to insert a variable — for example a custom variable field such as {{custom.clinic.endpoint_id}} (string — e.g. 3f6c2c1a-8b0d-4e2f-9a41-6c7d5e8f9a01) that holds the right endpoint for the caller’s clinic. The value must resolve to a routing endpoint; Use literal switches back to the picker.
Warm transfer messaging
The Warm transfer messaging card appears when Transfer Mode is Warm, and sets what each party hears. It’s laid out in two columns — Contact (the caller) and Team Member (the human being dialled) — with Failed and Connected outcome messages beneath. Every message field supports variables: type/ to insert one, such as {{contact.first_name}} (string — e.g. Jane).
The Failure Message covers failures after dialling starts. A closed endpoint never dials at all — the caller hears the built-in out-of-hours line instead (see Out-of-hours handling).
Step overrides
Live Handoff is on everywhere by default. The Step overrides card is where you switch it off for the steps that should never offer a transfer: “Every flow and step uses the destination above by default. Select the individual steps below that should never trigger a handoff.” Every flow in the script — the main flow, the pre-call flow, and any child flows — appears as a collapsible row. Expand a flow and you get:
Typical exclusions are steps you must not interrupt — a compliance disclosure, a payment capture, or a wrap-up that has to be completed.
You can do the same thing from the flow editor. Each step’s menu has a Live Handoff tick: steps inherit the script setting, and unticking one excludes just that step. The tooltip reads “Steps inherit the script’s live handoff from Settings. Untick to exclude this step from triggering a handoff.” — and when the master switch is off it reads “Live handoff is turned off in Settings. Enable it there to control it per step.” Both surfaces edit the same setting.
Handoff offers are made on conversation steps — tool steps run their own configuration and are not affected.
Handoff outcome variables
Every finished handoff attempt records what happened, so your script can respond to the real reason rather than guessing. The values are available immediately, so the very next step can route on them.
The full list, including the reason detail and how long the attempt took, is on Variables.
This matters because the failures are not the same. A destination that rejects the call in five seconds is a dead or diverted number; an attempt that rings for three minutes is a busy team. Branch on
{{handoff.last.status}} and say something true:
A step that runs after a failed handoff can read {{handoff.last.status}} and say something true — “everyone is on a call at the moment, can I take a message?” after a timeout, and “I can’t reach the team on that line, let me arrange a call back” after a rejected. You can also fold the value into what the assistant says with a text function, so one step covers every outcome.
Out-of-hours handling
Availability comes entirely from the routing endpoint’s schedule — there is no separate hours setting on the script. That keeps hours in one place: change the schedule on the Numbers & Routing page and every script transferring to that endpoint follows suit. The status dot in the endpoint picker always shows whether the endpoint is open right now. When a caller asks for a human while the endpoint is closed:- The assistant explains naturally — “Sorry, the team is not available right now.” (the wording varies between calls) — and carries on helping.
- Handoff offers are switched off for the rest of that call, so the assistant doesn’t repeatedly offer a transfer it can’t complete.
- Availability is re-checked at the moment the transfer actually starts, so a caller confirmed just before closing time is still handled correctly.
Handing over a call in progress
You do not have to wait for the caller to ask. While a call is running you can trigger the handoff yourself from the call’s Live call panel — see Live monitoring. Nothing is announced up front: the assistant keeps talking while the person is dialled, and only breaks in once they answer, with a line such as ”…I think it’s best if I get my team to take over from here — just looping them in now.” If nobody answers, nothing is said and the call simply carries on.Next Steps
- Endpoints — create the transfer destinations Live Handoff dials, grouped by location and department.
- Variables — the full set of handoff outcome variables.
- Schedules — the business-hours definitions that decide when an endpoint is open.
- Transferring calls — the full runtime story of a warm transfer, from hold music to merge.
- Warm Handoff tool — transfer at a specific step of your flow, with per-step control over every message.