Call handling | ElevenLabs Documentation

The On the call group on the Receptionists page controls what happens during a phone call: who picks up first, when calls are transferred to your team, how callers are verified, and which numbers are blocked.

Who answers first

Who answers first decides whether your staff phone rings before the receptionist. It applies to every receptionist in your workspace. Under Staff answers first, choose:

Option	Behavior
Never (default)	Every call goes straight to the receptionist.
Business hours	During your business hours, your staff phone rings first. If nobody answers, the receptionist takes over. Outside those hours, the receptionist answers.
Always	Every call rings your staff phone first. If nobody answers, the receptionist takes over.
Custom hours	Staff answer first during the hours you set. Outside those hours, the receptionist answers.

Business hours follows your business hours. With more than one location, choose which location’s hours to follow. Custom hours includes a timezone.

When staff answer first, open Staff phone:

Setting	Description
Staff phone number	The number to ring first. Your own or office phone, not the number clients dial. Premium-rate and shared-cost numbers can’t be used.
Message before ringing	Spoken to the caller before the phone rings (up to 200 characters).
Ring music	What the caller hears while waiting: Soft Rock (default), Ambient, Classical, Electronica, Rock, or Guitars.
Maximum ring time	How long to ring before the receptionist answers: 10, 15 (default), 20, 30, 45, or 60 seconds.
Handover message	Spoken when staff does not answer and the receptionist takes over (up to 200 characters).

Staff answering first places an outbound call to your staff phone. It is unavailable on a Reception.ai number in Canada unless every number on the receptionist comes from your own Twilio account or SIP Trunk. See Bring your own number.

Forward an existing number

To keep your current business line, forward calls you don’t answer to your receptionist’s number. Forwarding is set up with your phone carrier and works independently of who answers first.

Open Forward an existing number, choose the country of the phone you will forward from, and dial the codes shown. For most mobile carriers:

When	Code
When you don’t answer	`*61<number>#`
When your line is busy	`*67<number>#`
When your phone is off or unreachable	`*62<number>#`
Forward every call	`*21<number>#`
To turn forwarding off later	`##002#`

Some carriers, such as Verizon in the US, use star codes instead (*71 for busy or unanswered calls, *72 for all calls). The dialog shows the right codes for your country.

Your carrier controls how many rings pass before forwarding, and may charge for forwarded calls. Landlines and internet phone systems are configured through your provider’s settings instead.

Transfer to a human

Transfer rules let your receptionist connect callers to specific people or departments based on what the caller says. You can create up to 100 transfer rules per receptionist.

Each rule has:

Label: a short name (1–200 characters).
Phone number: where to transfer the call.
When to transfer: the condition, in plain English (1–2,000 characters).
Digits to dial after connecting (optional): keypad tones to play once the destination answers, for example to reach an extension. Use 0–9, *, #, w for a 0.5-second pause, and W for a 1-second pause, up to 50 characters. This field appears when Allow playing touch tones is on in Advanced settings.

Example transfer rules

Label	When to transfer	Phone number
Owner	Caller asks to speak with the owner or manager	Owner’s mobile
Billing	Caller has questions about billing, payments, or invoices	Finance line
Emergency	Caller describes an emergency	Emergency contact
Specific person	Caller asks for Sarah by name	Sarah’s direct line

Transfer availability and limits

Transfers work on phone calls only, not on web conversations.
Transfers are unavailable on a Reception.ai number in Canada unless every number on the receptionist comes from your own Twilio account or SIP Trunk.
Transferring to a number outside your business’s country requires your own Twilio number or the Premium plan.
Premium-rate and shared-cost numbers can’t be used as transfer destinations, even with your own Twilio number.
During the free trial, you can add or edit up to 10 transfer rules per day.

Transfer settings

By default, the person receiving a transferred call sees the caller’s own number. This is a blind transfer: the call is handed over directly.

Turn on Show your business number instead to show your business number. The person receiving the call then hears a summary of the conversation before being connected, and the caller hears hold music while they wait.

Turn on Keep recording after a transfer to record the rest of the call after your receptionist transfers it and add it to the end of the call recording. This only applies while call recordings are stored. New businesses start with it on.

Transfer settings is available when all of the receptionist’s numbers are Twilio numbers.

Verify caller identity

Protect client data by requiring callers to prove who they are before the receptionist reads or changes their records, and keep your receptionist from answering spam calls.

Setting	Default	Behavior
Secure mode	Off	The receptionist only looks up or changes a client’s details when the caller’s number matches the one on file. Clients created during the same conversation are trusted.
Identity verification tool	Off	The receptionist can send a one-time code to the client’s email or phone number on file and ask the caller to read it back.
Spam protection	On for new businesses	Checks callers before your receptionist answers. Callers whose number can’t be verified are asked to press a key to be connected. Callers whose number is verified, and clients already on file, go straight through.

With secure mode on, callers from an unknown number and website visitors must pass verification before accessing their records. Codes are sent by email by default. Sending by SMS requires an SMS-capable Twilio number. See Notifications and SMS.

Spam protection is available to businesses in the US. It does not appear when every number on the receptionist is a SIP trunk number.

Blocked numbers

Block phone numbers from reaching your receptionist. Blocked callers are rejected immediately. The block list applies to every receptionist in your workspace.

When blocking a number, you can add:

Reason: a note for your team.
Block until: an expiry date. Leave empty to block permanently.

You can also block a number from a conversation or a client profile.