What the Agent Transfers option lets an agent do

When an agent is on a live call, the transfer-conference panel is the part of the agent screen that lets them pull other people onto the call or hand the call off entirely. The Agent Transfers user option is the single switch that decides whether that panel is available to a given agent at all.

What the option controls

Set to its default of active, the agent can open the transfer-conference section and use it to do two related things. The first is a Three-way call, where the agent stays on the line and adds a third party such as a supervisor or a specialist. The second is moving the call off their own session, either as a Warm transfer where they introduce the call first, or a Cold transfer where they drop it straight onto the destination.

Common destinations inside that panel include an Ingroup queue, another agent, or an outside Extension reached through a Dial prefix. The point is that all of those actions live behind this one permission.

What disabling it does

If you set Agent Transfers to disabled, the agent cannot open the transfer-conference section of the screen at all. With the panel closed off, they have no way to three-way another party in and no way to blind-transfer a live call anywhere. The call simply stays with them until it ends.

That is a blunt but useful tool. On a script-tight campaign where you do not want frontline agents handing calls around, turning this off removes the temptation and the mistakes entirely. It also closes off a path to a Barge-in or accidental Call park that an untrained agent might trigger by exploring the panel mid-call.

It is worth being clear about what this option is not. It does not change how inbound calls are routed to the agent in the first place, and it does not touch Skills-based routing or queue priority. It only governs what the agent can do with a call once they already have it on the line. If transfers are landing on the wrong destination, the fix is in the transfer presets and the Ingroup config, not in this single permission.

flowchart TD
  A[Agent on live call] --> B{Agent Transfers enabled}
  B -->|yes| C[Transfer panel opens]
  C --> D[Three way call]
  C --> E[Warm transfer]
  C --> F[Cold transfer]
  B -->|no| G[Panel blocked call stays with agent]

Who should and should not have it

Most agents who handle real conversations need transfers on so they can escalate to a Closer or loop in a manager. Where you would turn it off is for narrow roles: a survey-only seat, a pure data-collection campaign, or a brand-new hire you do not yet trust to move calls correctly. For those, disabling the option keeps the workflow simple and safe.

There is a quality angle here too. Every transfer is a hand-off, and hand-offs are where customer experience drops if they are done badly. By limiting transfers to agents who have been trained on warm-transfer etiquette, you keep the people who can move a call cleanly in control of that action. Newer agents get there once they have proven they can introduce a call without dropping the customer on a cold queue. So the option doubles as a training gate: off while learning, on once trusted.

Because this setting lives on the individual user, it is one of the levers you tune as you design roles across teams. If a whole shift needs transfers off, that is usually a hint to organize them with the users and groups structure rather than flipping the same switch one user at a time.

Transfers also intersect with what an agent is allowed to do manually. If you are setting up a role that can both transfer and dial out by hand, read our note on the Agent Call Manual option alongside this one to get the full picture. For the full set of per-user toggles in one place, the user permission matrix lays them all out.

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