The assistant passes a conversation to your team when the customer asks for a person, when the knowledge base has no answer, when something fails or when it reaches its reply limit. The customer is told about it, the conversation moves to the assistant's fallback team, and any agent can give it back to the assistant later.
When the assistant hands over
In a normal inbox the conversation goes to your team when:
- the customer asks for a person, or accepts the assistant's offer of one. When the assistant cannot answer, it first says so and offers to connect the customer with a colleague; it also hands over if the customer is clearly stuck or frustrated;
- a reply has no support in the knowledge base, or the model produced no reply at all (see How the assistant answers);
- something fails: the AI provider returns an error, there are too many conversations waiting, or a reply takes too long. A reply may take up to 90 seconds in the web chat, Telegram and WhatsApp and up to 3 minutes in email;
- the assistant has sent as many replies as Max turns allows since it was assigned;
- someone other than the customer writes in an email thread, for example a person in copy.
Offer handoff to a human in the assistant settings controls whether the assistant can offer a person and hand over by itself. With it off, the assistant does not hand over even when the customer asks; it tells the customer it cannot help instead. The cases above that are decided by the system (no support in the knowledge base, no reply, errors, the reply limit, another participant) still send the conversation to your team. If you have no agents at all, use an AI chat without agents instead.
What the customer is told
Before the conversation moves, the assistant tells the customer what is happening, in the customer's language:
- "I am passing you to a colleague. They will reply here." when the customer asked for a person or the assistant decided to pass the conversation on, after an error or at the reply limit;
- "I could not find an answer to this in our knowledge base, so I am passing you to a colleague. They will reply here." when the knowledge base had no answer.
Nothing is written to the customer when the handoff happens because another participant joined an email thread, or when the assistant's own reply could not be sent.
Why it handed over: the note for your agents
Every handoff leaves a private note in the conversation, so the agent knows what happened. The fixed notes below are written in the language of your panel:
| Reason | Note your agents see |
|---|---|
| The customer asked for a person, or the assistant decided to pass it on | The reason the assistant gave, or "The AI assistant handed this conversation off to a human." |
| No support in the knowledge base | "The AI assistant had no knowledge base grounding for this and handed the conversation off to a human." |
| No reply from the model | "The AI assistant did not have an answer and handed this conversation off to a human." |
| Error or timeout | "The AI assistant could not respond and handed this conversation off to a human." |
| Reply limit reached | "The AI assistant reached its response limit for this conversation and handed it off to a human." |
| Another participant in an email thread | "Someone other than the contact replied on this conversation, so the AI assistant handed it off to a human." |
| The customer asked to be called back | The phone number and, if the customer named one, a convenient time (see below) |
Conversations where the knowledge base had no answer are the most useful ones to read: they show which articles your knowledge base is missing.
Where the conversation goes
The conversation moves to the team chosen in Fallback team of the assistant, and the assistant is removed as the assignee. A new platform has one such team, "First line", and you are in it.
"First line" hands conversations out by round robin. The check runs every five minutes and assigns a waiting conversation to a team member who is signed in to the panel and Online; a member who is only idle at the desk also counts. Agents who are Offline, or who have switched on Away in their user menu, get nothing. An agent who already has five open conversations gets no more this way: that is the team setting Maximum auto-assigned conversations, where 0 means no limit.
The whole team also gets a notification in the panel and an email "A conversation is waiting for an operator". This comes from the automation rule "Handoff to a team → notify the team", which you can switch off or edit. Emails go out only when emails to your agents are set up (see Notifications and the EPAV mailbox).
If Fallback team is None, the assistant only removes itself as the assignee. A conversation without a team is then handed out to nobody: it waits in Unassigned until someone takes it. Keep a fallback team set.
Contact form before the handoff
In the website chat and the mobile app chat, the assistant can collect the customer's details before it passes the conversation on. In the live chat inbox, under Conversations > Pre-chat form, turn on Enable pre-chat form and Show only during AI handoff and set up the fields, see Live chat widget. The form is then not shown when a chat starts.
When the assistant decides that the customer needs a person, it first asks them, in their language, to leave their details: the form appears inside its message with a Continue with a person button, and the message field is hidden until the form is sent. After that the conversation goes to your team as usual. A customer who writes in the chat instead, for example from another tab, is handed over at once. Signed-in users see the form too, and it only fills in details their token did not provide. A handoff caused by an error goes to your team without the form, and asking for the form does not count towards Max turns.
"Call me back" requests
When a customer asks to be called, the assistant asks for a phone number with the country code if it does not have one. A number already known from the mobile app sign-in or from WhatsApp is not asked again. The conversation then goes to your team with a note such as "Asks to be called back: +372... Convenient time: after 5 pm." (the time only if the customer named one), and the customer is told "I have passed on your request: you will get a call back."
Your agent calls from their own phone: the panel has no telephony. This request needs Offer handoff to a human on and is not available in an AI chat inbox. More in Voice messages.
Taking a conversation over
To answer a customer yourself while the assistant is handling the conversation, assign the conversation to yourself (or to a colleague). A reply from an agent alone does not stop the assistant: it keeps answering the customer's next messages for as long as it is the assignee.
The assistant checks the conversation again after preparing each reply. If a person has taken it over or resolved it in the meantime, the prepared reply is dropped, so the assistant never talks over your agent.
Giving a conversation back to the assistant
Any conversation can go back to the assistant, including one it handed over earlier. Open the conversation, and in the right sidebar on the Details tab open Actions, click the agent field and choose the assistant: assistants appear in the same list as your agents.
The reply limit starts again from that moment. If the customer's last message has not been answered yet, the assistant answers it right away; otherwise it waits for the customer's next message.
To send all conversations of a channel to the assistant, use a routing rule (see Routing a new channel to the assistant).
Messages after a conversation is resolved
In Telegram and WhatsApp there are no email threads, so the panel decides by time whether a new message continues an old conversation. Each of these inboxes has the setting Reopen window (hours):
- while a conversation is not resolved, every new message from the customer goes into it;
- if the customer writes within the window after the conversation was resolved, it reopens and keeps its assignee: the assistant if it was handling it, otherwise the agent or team that had it;
- after the window, the message starts a new conversation, which your routing rules send to the assistant again. A value of 0 always starts a new conversation.
A new Telegram or WhatsApp inbox starts with 48 hours; check the value in your inbox settings. In email, a reply in an existing thread always lands in its own conversation and reopens it.
AI chat inboxes never hand over
An inbox switched to AI chat without agents has no handoff at all. When the knowledge base has no answer, the customer is asked for another question, after an error they are asked to try again, and a request for a person gets the explanation that only the AI assistant answers in this chat. The conversation stays assigned to the assistant, there is no reply limit, and such cases are recorded as unanswered questions rather than handoffs.
Your agents still see these conversations in the common list. To answer one personally, an agent assigns it to themselves. See AI chat without agents.