Phone

Hold, conference, swap and urgent calls, with an agent at the switchboard

Make Pocket your phone app and agents can answer, hold a caller, dial someone else, merge everyone into a conference, swap lines and let urgent numbers break through.

Businesses pay for a cloud PBX to do things every phone could already do: put a caller on hold, bring in a colleague, jump to an urgent line. The phone could always do it. You just couldn't tell it to do it for you.

With Pocket set as your phone app, every call on your SIM belongs to your agents too. They see each call and its state, and they can act on it while you keep talking.

The switchboard in your pocket

list_calls          every live call: number, contact, active / held / ringing
answer_call         pick up (the current call goes on hold, nobody is dropped)
hold_call           put a caller on hold
resume_call         bring them back
add_call            hold this caller and dial another
merge_calls         conference everyone together
swap_calls          jump between the two lines
send_dtmf           press keys for IVR menus ("press 2 for billing")
mute / end_call     per call
set_urgent_callers  numbers that always break through

Things you can say

• "Hold this customer and get Anil from accounts on the line, then merge us."
• "If my daughter's school calls while I'm on a call, answer it and hold the other one."
• "Call the bank, press 2 then 4, and tell me when a person picks up."
• "Every morning at 10, call the site supervisor and put him through to me."
• "Swap back to the first caller."

Urgent callers break through

Give Pocket a list of numbers that matter: family, your biggest client, the on-call engineer. When one of them rings while you're busy, Pocket can answer automatically and put the current caller on hold, so the urgent call never goes to voicemail. The list lives on the phone, and an agent can update it ("add my new manager to urgent").

A real call screen

Being the phone app means Pocket also draws the call screen: every call as a card with its timer, one tap to hold, resume, merge or swap, a keypad for tones, and a full-screen ring over the lock screen. Your normal calls work exactly as before. You can switch back to your old dialer any time in Android settings.

• Agent mode: dialling a new number or changing urgent callers waits for your tap on an approval card.
• Autonomous mode: it just happens. Use it for routines you trust.
• Conference calls use your carrier's own merge, so three-way calling must be on your plan (it is on most).

To turn it on: Account → Phone control → Make Pocket the phone app. Live call control is in the sideloaded Android build from the download page.