Voice
Voice is the Setup-side name for Salesforce's in-console telephony.
Definition
Voice is the Setup-side name for Salesforce's in-console telephony. It covers the configuration area and the contact center behind it, which puts phone calls beside the cases, chats, and records reps already work. Current documentation calls the product Salesforce Voice. It shipped for years as Service Cloud Voice, and the Summer '26 guide notes that the old name still appears across the product.
What sits under the label covers the call and everything wrapped around it: Omni-Channel routing, live transcription, and recording. AI assists during the conversation and drafts the wrap-up after it, and Voice Call records carry the reporting. The telephony underneath is your choice: Salesforce's native voice channel, Amazon Connect, or a certified partner provider.
Voice is an add-on license on top of Service Cloud or Sales Cloud. No edition upgrade switches it on by itself.
In plain English
“Imagine your phone and your customer files in the same window. When someone calls, their history appears before you say hello. The computer types out the conversation as it happens. When the call ends, a summary is already saved.”
Worked example
A regional insurance carrier runs claims intake on a Partner Telephony Contact Center. A policyholder dials the claims line, Omni-Channel matches the caller ID to the Contact record for Priya Raman, and her open Case 00104582 pops on screen. The live transcript scrolls beside the case while the rep talks. When Priya starts reading out her bank details, the rep pauses the recording and resumes it afterwards. At wrap-up the interaction closes as a Voice Call record showing Call Type Inbound, a duration of 412 seconds, and a disposition of Documents Received.
How a phone call becomes a Salesforce record
Which name you see depends on where you look
Three labels are in circulation, and Setup is the slowest to catch up. Your Setup tree and installed managed packages still read Service Cloud Voice. Help pages say Salesforce Voice, sometimes Salesforce Voice with Telephony Providers. Trailhead went a third way: its partner telephony module now titles itself Partner Contact Center, while the URL still reads service-cloud-voice. That is branding, not versioning. Search all three names, or you will miss half the material.
Picking a telephony model is close to a one-way door
The choice between the three telephony models is the first real decision, and what changes is ownership. On the native path Salesforce holds the number, the channel, and the call menu, so everything you configure lives in Setup. On Amazon Connect the IVR lives in Connect Flows, and the surface widens to Lambda functions and CloudWatch. With a partner, the vendor keeps the queues and routing rules in its own console. Changing your mind later means porting numbers and rebuilding a menu tree, so decide before you design anything.
Omni-Channel does the routing, the phone system does not
A call arriving through Voice becomes an Omni-Channel work item, the same as a chat or a case. One capacity model spans every channel, so a rep already holding four chats does not also get handed a call. Spring '26 added a Route a Voice Call API and a Request a Callback API. Both depend on Omni-Channel Unified Routing, a separate setting. Summer '26 extended callbacks with scheduling. Sort that dependency early, because finding it after you have built a callback flow is a bad afternoon.
Transcription, and the AI that reads it
Voice converts speech to text as the call happens and shows the transcript next to the record the rep is working. AI reads it live to suggest knowledge articles and next best actions, then drafts the wrap-up summary once the call ends. Salesforce publishes zero data retention agreements with the model providers behind these features, naming OpenAI, Deepgram, and ElevenLabs. Accuracy still drops with strong accents and poor lines, so avoid automation that assumes a clean transcript.
Agentforce Voice takes the IVR's job
Agentforce Voice is the newer layer on top: an AI agent that answers the phone and holds a conversation instead of reading out a menu. Trailhead describes two shapes. The agent can be the primary point of contact, taking the call the moment it lands. Or it can sit at specific points in a call flow you already run. Escalation to a human rep is part of the design. Treat it as a separate build from the contact center underneath.
Open CTI is cheaper, and it has an end date
Open CTI embeds a third-party softphone in the console with no extra license, and still gives you the screen pop, click-to-dial, and activity logging. On price alone it wins. It is also finished. Salesforce has put Open CTI in maintenance mode, deprecated it outright, and blocked it in newly created Agentforce Service orgs. Retirement is set for February 28, 2028, after which existing implementations stop functioning. Salesforce Voice is the named replacement. So this is not cheap against expensive. It is a per-rep cost you start paying now against a migration with a fixed deadline. If a contact center of yours runs on Open CTI, get the move costed this year.
Standing up a Voice contact center
The clicks vary by telephony path, but the shape holds across all three.
- Confirm licensing and pick the path
Voice nodes do not appear in Setup until the licenses land, so an unlicensed org looks exactly like an org missing the feature. Check that first. Then choose between Salesforce native voice, Amazon Connect, and a certified partner provider. Count licenses by reps who take calls, not headcount.
- Install the provider package
On the partner telephony path, the provider's managed package comes from AppExchange and goes in before anything else. It supplies the connector that talks to your org through the Connector API. The native and Amazon Connect paths skip this step.
- Create the contact center
In Setup, use Quick Find for Partner Telephony Setup. Under Create Your Contact Center, click New, then pick the installed provider package. Give the record a display name and an internal name, or import the XML definition file. The finished contact center then appears under Partner Telephony Contact Centers, where you add users.
- Attach a phone number
On the native path, Communication Channels in Setup procures the number and binds it to a voice channel, either a 10-digit long code or a toll-free line. The Trailhead walkthrough labels that node Communication Channels (Pilot) in one place, so check that Salesforce has enabled it for your org. On the other paths the number stays with the provider.
- Enable recording, transcription, and routing
Switch on call recording and transcription. Add reps as contact center users, give them Omni-Channel presence and capacity, then add the softphone utility to the Service Console app.
Salesforce procures the number and runs the channel from Setup, with no vendor to coordinate.
The bundled AWS contact center, and the path with the most developer surface behind it.
Bring a certified CCaaS provider you already run, connected through its managed package and the Connector API.
- Setup labels lag the branding, so search both names.
- After Conversation Work time is set in Omni-Channel, not in the contact center.
- Pause and resume of recordings stays off until you enable it.
Prefer this walkthrough as its own page? How to Voice in Salesforce, step by step
How organizations use Voice
Puts outage calls through Amazon Connect so the menu tree stays in Connect Flows, while agents work the linked cases in the Service Console.
Puts Agentforce Voice on the front door for password resets and order status, escalating anything else to a human rep.
Depends on pause and resume recording during payment capture, and on Omni-Channel Unified Routing to send repeat callers back to their previous rep.
Trust & references
Cross-checked against the following references.
- Salesforce Voice with Telephony Providers Implementation Guide (opens in new tab)Salesforce
- Salesforce Voice with Telephony Providers Implementation Guide Release Notes (opens in new tab)Salesforce
- Set Up Salesforce Voice with Partner Telephony in Your Org (opens in new tab)Salesforce
- API Support and End of Life | Open CTI Developer Guide (opens in new tab)Salesforce
- Salesforce Open CTI Retirement in February 2028 (opens in new tab)Salesforce
- Setup Prerequisites for Salesforce Voice with Telephony Providers (opens in new tab)Salesforce
- Agentforce Voice Overview (opens in new tab)Salesforce
- Meet Agentforce Voice (opens in new tab)Salesforce
- Set Up the Foundation for Agentforce Contact Center (opens in new tab)Salesforce
Straight from the source - Salesforce's reference material on Voice.
Hands-on resources to go deeper on Voice.
About the Author
Dipojjal Chakrabarti is a B2C Solution Architect with 29 Salesforce certifications and over 13 years in the Salesforce ecosystem. He writes and edits salesforcedictionary.com, published by KineticBit Inc., to help admins, developers, architects, and cert/interview candidates sharpen their fundamentals. More about Dipojjal.
Test your knowledge
+5 pts / dayQ1. What did Salesforce rename Service Cloud Voice to?
Q2. Which Salesforce feature decides which rep receives an incoming Voice call?
Q3. A team runs a CCaaS platform it likes and wants only the screen pop and click-to-dial inside Salesforce, with no add-on license. What should you tell it about the classic Open CTI route?
Discussion
Loading discussion…