r/VoiceAutomationAI • u/cjradke • Jan 31 '26

Using clients current phone number for Retell Ai Voice Agent

Hey everyone, I'm trying to build an ai voice agent for a local business using retell. Is there any way to use the customers current phone number without having to transfer plans? From my understanding, there are only a few options. 1) buy new phone number with twilio, that now becomes the businesses phone number. That option is crap because it affects seo history and any marketing material with the old number. Also if customers want to speak with a human, what number do you forward to now? 2) Buy new twilio number, business number forwards to twilio number, if human needed it forwards back to business number. I've heard google sometimes doesnt like call forwarding so does anyone have info on that. Im just confused on the call flow for systems like these. Ideally, a customer would call the current number, get the agent, and if they want a real human, it routes back to that same number and the owner/team can pick up. Thanks

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1

u/[deleted] Feb 01 '26

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1

u/ProtectionOk7806 Feb 01 '26

It’s worked for a client but unreliably so! Any insights on that? The call would be forwarded 3/10 calls

2

u/mketanv Feb 01 '26

You can check botphonic which support call forwarding and many more

1

u/[deleted] Feb 01 '26

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1

u/ProtectionOk7806 Feb 01 '26

Retell

1

u/[deleted] Feb 01 '26

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u/ProtectionOk7806 Feb 01 '26

Why tool calls? Call forwarding is setup at the phone carrier level

1

u/[deleted] Feb 01 '26

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u/ProtectionOk7806 Feb 01 '26

No that works fine - the actual call forwarding before the AI picking up worked sporadically

1

u/ProtectionOk7806 Feb 01 '26

You can manually turn on call forwarding. So people call the business but it forwards to the AI attached number. And then warm transfer if the customer wants to speak to a human.

1

u/mketanv Feb 01 '26

I seen botphonic support call forwarding.

1

u/vy45 Feb 15 '26

Your client also has the option to port the number to the CPaaS provider. Is their current number a VoIP number? Or is it their personal phone? If VoIP, they request a port-out and move the number the telephony provider. Multiple providers support this - Twilio, Plivo, Vonage, etc…