What a handoff is
A handoff topic is a category of question where you'd rather have a human pick up than have Salva try to answer. When Salva detects the topic in a caller's words, it skips its usual response and routes the conversation to your team instead.
This is separate from emergency detection — dental emergencies always go to your emergency line. Smart handoffs are for the non-emergency topics you simply want a person to own.
Choosing what triggers a handoff
In Settings → Voice Settings → Smart Handoffs you turn on the triggers that fit your practice. The presets cover the common ones:
- Clinical / medical advice — post-op concerns, symptoms, "is this normal," treatment recommendations.
- Billing & insurance — coverage questions, balances, payment disputes.
- Complaints — an unhappy caller, or anyone who sounds frustrated.
- Speak to a person — the caller explicitly asks for a human.
Beyond the presets, you can add your own custom topics (up to 20) in plain English — for example "questions about our orthodontics financing" or "anything about Dr. Lee's schedule." If a caller raises one, Salva hands off instead of answering.
Live transfer vs. take a message
Each handoff can be handled one of two ways, and you choose which:
Salva tells the caller it's connecting them, dials your office line, and bridges the call when a staff member picks up. If no one answers within 20 seconds, it falls back to taking a detailed message — the caller never gets dead air.
After-hours behavior
You can tell Salva to skip the live dial after hours for non-emergency handoffs. When you're closed, those topics take a message instead of ringing your team's phones — the request still lands in your Inbox and notifies you, but nobody's evening gets interrupted for a routine billing question. Dental emergencies are the exception: they always dial through to your emergency line, day or night.
What your office receives
However a handoff is handled, the office gets context — not just "a call came in." The notification and Inbox entry include the reason for the handoff and any details Salva already collected (name, callback number, the gist of the question). If a live transfer fails and the caller reconnects, those details are pre-filled so they aren't asked to repeat themselves.
What happens if a transfer fails
If you chose live transfer and the line doesn't pick up within 20 seconds, Salva falls back to taking a detailed message — same as any other transfer (see Transfer destinations: main vs. emergency). The caller is never dropped.
Published April 24, 2026 · Updated June 16, 2026