The agent workflow takes a few clicks inside the softphone. Underneath, Service Cloud Voice tracks each leg as a Voice Call record so the call log is complete.
- Receive or place a customer call
With Service Cloud Voice active, accept an incoming call or place an outbound. The customer call leg is now active in the softphone.
- Open the Consult panel
In the softphone, click Consult. A directory of internal agents and queues appears, plus a dialer for external numbers.
- Pick the consult party
Search for a colleague, pick a queue, or type an external number. Click Dial. The customer is automatically placed on hold and hears hold music; the agent is now on the consult leg.
- Brief the consult party
Explain the customer issue, share context, and decide jointly what to do next. The agent can also share the Case record through the workspace (the consult party sees it in their own console).
- Decide on the outcome
Three choices in the softphone: Return hangs up the consult and returns the agent to the customer alone, Conference merges both calls into a three-way, Transfer releases the agent and leaves the customer with the consult party.
- Confirm the call log
After the call ends, verify the Voice Call records and their parent/child links captured the consult correctly. If your org runs reports on consult duration or warm transfer rate, this is the data source.
- Consult Call is a Service Cloud Voice feature in its native form. Third-party Open CTI adapters may use a different name and slightly different mechanics.
- External consults often use outbound telephony charges. Review your contract before promoting external consult as a regular pattern.
- Call recording during the consult is configurable per leg. Make sure the org-wide configuration matches the regulatory regime you operate under.
- Conference-mode consults sometimes drop the customer when the agent transfers control. Test the specific telephony platform behavior before training agents on a workflow that relies on conferencing.
- If the consult party is on a different telephony provider (e.g., consulting an external partner), latency and audio quality may degrade. This is a known SCV/Amazon Connect characteristic, not a Salesforce bug.