Transfer to a Person

Sometimes a caller needs a real person, not your assistant. Maybe they ask for a manager, have a situation your assistant isn't set up to handle, or your assistant simply recognizes that a human needs to take over. Sulus gives you two ways to set this up: a single-field option for businesses that just want every call sent to one number, and a fuller custom option for businesses that need more than one destination or want more control over how the handoff sounds.

This guide covers both, plus telling your assistant when it should actually transfer a call. It works the same way whether you're logged into the main Sulus portal or a reseller's white-labeled version of it.

The real phone number you want calls sent to. This could be your front desk, a manager's cell, or a department line, as long as it's a number a real person actually answers.

If every call that needs a human should go to the same place, no menu of departments, no custom script, just one number, this is the fastest way to set it up.

1. Click on the assistant you want to set this up on. This opens its edit screen.
2. Click the three-dots (⋮) button to open its dropdown menu.
3. From that dropdown, select Advanced Editor.
4. On the Advanced Editor page, use the left-side Sections list and click Tools.
5. Scroll to Predefined Functions.
6. Under Forwarding Phone Number, choose the country code and enter the number calls should go to.
7. Click Save Changes.

That's the whole setup. No separate tool to build, no destinations to configure. As with the other items under Predefined Functions, your assistant still needs to know when to actually use it, so add a line to its system prompt such as “If the caller asks to speak with a real person, or has a question you can't answer, transfer the call,” the same way described in Step 5 of Path B below.

Use this path instead of Path A when you need more than one destination (sales versus support, for example), a custom message for each destination, or a warmer handoff where the person picking up hears context before the call connects.

Step 1: Create the Tool

1. From the left-hand menu of your portal, click Tools.
2. Click Create Tool.
3. Choose Transfer Call as the tool type. It's grouped under Phone Call Tools, alongside Hang Up and Press Keypad. You may also notice Handoff listed separately under Assistant Tools; that's a different feature for passing a call between assistants inside a Squad, not for transferring to a person, so skip it here.
4. Fill in the Tool Label (a name you'll recognize), the Tool Name (an internal identifier, for example transfer_to_sales, that doesn't need to be customer-friendly), and a Description telling the assistant when to transfer the call.

Step 2: Add One or More Destinations

A single tool can hold more than one named destination, so a "Sales" and a "Support" destination can both live inside one Transfer Call tool.

Step 3: Choose a Transfer Mode

The Transfer Plan's Transfer Mode controls how the handoff itself feels:

• Blind Transfer (the default) hands the call straight to the destination, the same way a regular phone forward works. Fast, no extra steps.
• Warm Transfer gives the person picking up a heads-up before the caller connects, either a short summary of the call or a custom message, so they already know why the caller is being sent to them.

A few more advanced transfer modes also exist for specific phone setups and experimental use cases. Most businesses never need these; contact your Sulus representative if you think you do.

Step 4: Attach the Tool to Your Assistant

Once a Transfer Call tool is created in the Tools library, it's available to attach to any assistant. There are two ways to do that:

1. Open the assistant, click ⋮, select Advanced Editor, click AI Model in the Sections list, scroll down past System Messages to the small Tools heading (right above Analysis Configuration), and click + Add Tool to select the tool you created.
2. Or, in the fuller Tools section (the same Sections-nav item used in Path A), use Select Tools to search for and attach it there instead.

Either way, click Save Changes once it's attached.

Step 5: Tell Your Assistant When to Use It

Attaching the tool doesn't tell your assistant when to reach for it. That instruction lives in its system prompt (covered in full in How to Write and Update Your Assistant's System Prompt).

1. In Advanced Editor > AI Model, scroll up to System Messages and find Message 1 (Role: System). The Content box there is your assistant's main instructions.
2. Add a plain sentence describing when to transfer, and if you built more than one destination, describe each: “If the caller asks about pricing or wants to buy something, transfer to Sales. If the caller has an existing account and needs help, transfer to Support.”
3. Click Save Changes.

If you manage assistants on behalf of your own customers, both paths above work the same way from within that customer's account. Setting up the forwarding field or a custom transfer tool yourself, or walking the customer through it directly, resolves most “can it forward to a real person” requests without needing to escalate to Sulus support.

If you don't see a Tools section or a Forwarding Phone Number field, Transfer Call isn't listed as a tool type, or a saved transfer doesn't seem to fire on a test call, your support team has this covered, so reach out to [email protected].