Calls · Warm handoffs
RelayContact centresTurning service calls into warm handoffs without cold follow-up
Service calls are full of customers who mention a mortgage renewal or a new business account in passing. These field notes cover how a Relay can turn those moments into warm handoffs, with a person in charge of every follow-up.
Valnora & Elric team5 min read
A customer calls about a lost card and, while the replacement is ordered, mentions that their fixed-rate mortgage ends in March. Another asks about a transfer limit because they are opening a second shop. The adviser solves the problem they called about, and the bigger need disappears with the call.
These notes cover a setup in Agent Serve that catches those moments and hands them to the right person as a warm lead: someone who raised the need themselves and agreed to hear from you.
Is this the same as Agent Inbound & Outbound?
No. Agent Inbound & Outbound is the Valnora & Elric product that answers and places calls. This setup is a different job, built in Agent Serve. It does not answer or place calls. It reads transcripts of calls your team has already handled, and it leaves every follow-up with a person.
Where do the transcripts and intent come from?
There are two routes in, and both end in the same place.
- Upload to a Call Compliance dashboard built with Dashboards. Its transcripts panel accepts text, VTT, SRT, JSON, Markdown, Word, PDF and CSV files, and call audio such as mp3, m4a or wav, transcribed with the model you choose and optional speaker labels.
- Transcribe audio with a workflow built in the workflow builder: the Speech-to-Text block turns each recording into text as it arrives, which is then analysed in the same way.
Each call is analysed into fields: sentiment, topics, intent, objections, next steps and a summary, plus custom fields you define. For warm leads, add a custom field that records whether the customer agreed to be contacted about the need, and how. The results land in a conversations table, one row per call.
How does the Relay find a warm lead?
From a service call to a warm handoff
Data · Call analysis
- 01Call transcriptsTranscripts or call audio imported into a Call Compliance dashboard, or produced by a Speech-to-Text workflow.
- 02Analytics fieldsIntent, topics, next steps and a custom consent field are extracted for every call.
- 03Conversations tableOne row per call with the extracted fields and a link to the transcript.
Relay · Warm handoff
- 04Watch for intentWatches the conversations table for calls where a customer raised a product need.
- 05Check the playbookSearches your handoff playbook for which team owns that need and what they may offer.
- 06Handoff noteA short brief for the adviser: what the customer said, consent status and suggested approach.
- 07Approved follow-upA follow-up email to the customer is drafted and sent only after the adviser approves it.
A Relay, an AI coworker with its own instructions and access, watches the conversations table. You describe in plain language what counts as a lead, for example "the customer mentioned a product need we offer and it was not the reason for the call", and the Relay checks new rows every 15 minutes, or on the interval you choose, with quiet hours outside working time. The watch never writes to the table.
For each match, it searches your handoff playbook in the Knowledge Base to find which team owns the need and what they may offer, then writes a handoff note and reports it back to the team lead’s chat with a notification.
What does the handoff look like?
What the solution produces
Warm handoff note (illustrative)
Record- Call
- Inbound · card services · resolved: replacement card ordered
- What the customer said
- "Our fixed rate ends in March and I have not looked at what happens next."
- Detected need
- Mortgage rate ending. Customer has a mortgage with you; no product switch on record.
- Consent
- Customer agreed on the call to be contacted by a mortgage adviser by email.
- Suggested owner
- Mortgage advice team, per the handoff playbook
- Suggested approach
- Email to offer a review call. Do not quote rates in the first message.
The note quotes the customer’s own words, states the consent position from the call, names the owning team and suggests an approach. The adviser decides whether to follow up at all. If the call already looks like a complaint or the customer seemed to be in difficulty, the instructions tell the Relay to say so and not suggest a sales approach. See vulnerable customer signals for how to detect that reliably.
How do consent and marketing rules fit in?
Consent is checked before a lead is passed on, and again before any message goes out.
- The custom consent field comes from the call itself. If it is empty or says no, the Relay records the need for the team lead’s information only and does not draft any outreach.
- Every email needs an approval. Relays never send email on their own, under any autonomy level. The adviser sees the exact message, and the approval covers only that text. A recipient policy (internal only, an allowlist, or anyone) controls who the Relay may write to. Many teams start with internal only, so drafts go to the adviser, who contacts the customer.
- Follow-up by phone or text is a person’s job. In the US, the TCPA and the FCC’s rules require consent for many marketing calls and texts that use autodialers or prerecorded voices, and other markets have their own rules on electronic marketing. Your compliance team should decide which follow-up channels the playbook allows.
Controls and governance
Approvals before action
Relays never send email or book meetings without an approval, under any autonomy setting. An approval covers the exact payload the reviewer saw and expires if nobody decides.
Audit trail
Proposals, approvals, declines and executed actions are written to the workspace audit log, which admins can export.
PII detection
A Guardrails block detects personal data and blocks or masks it before text reaches the next step.
Roles and permission groups
Admin, write and read roles per workspace, plus permission groups that limit which models, blocks and integrations a team can use.
Row-level access
Row-level policies narrow what each person sees in tables, dashboards, exports and scheduled reports.
Self-hosting
Run Agent Serve in your own cloud or data centre, next to the systems it reads.
GDPR ready
Retention from one day to five years, deletion and access controls support GDPR obligations. Ready means the controls are in place, not a certification.
More on how Agent Serve handles access, data and audit on the security page.
How do you know it is working?
Add two panels to the dashboard: leads found per week by need, and leads that became a follow-up. A Rules flag can mark leads that waited more than a few days without an owner, so the team lead can see where handoffs are stalling. Row-level access keeps each team’s leads to that team.
Begin with one need, such as mortgage rate endings, and one advice team. Review a week of handoff notes with the team before anyone acts on them, then widen the scope. For the consent checks on the original call, see disclosure and consent checks.
Questions teams ask
Is this Agent Inbound & Outbound?
No. Agent Inbound & Outbound is the Valnora & Elric product that answers and places calls. These notes cover a different job: finding warm leads in calls your team has already handled, with Agent Serve Dashboards, workflows, tables and Relays.
Can the Relay phone the customer back?
No. Relays do not make or take calls. The handoff goes to a person, who decides whether and how to follow up within your consent rules.
What you need
- Inbound call transcripts, or recordings and a Speech-to-Text workflow
- A Call Compliance dashboard with an intent field and a custom consent field set up
- A handoff playbook: which needs go to which team, and what they may and may not offer
- Your consent and marketing preferences policy, agreed with compliance
- A Gmail, Outlook or workspace inbox the Relay can draft from, with an internal or allowlist recipient policy where needed
- Named advisers or team leads to own handoffs and approve follow-ups