When Does the AI Hand Off to a Human?

Your assistant is built to answer on its own, but it passes a conversation to a real person in a few well-defined situations. There are three ways a handoff happens: the AI does it automatically, you design it into a flow, or an agent takes over by hand.

1. Automatic handoff (built in, on by default)

With Live Agent Handoff turned on, the AI itself decides when a human is needed. It reads every message and escalates when it detects:

• A direct request for a person — e.g. "talk to someone", "I need a real agent", "customer service".
• Frustration or escalation — angry language, a repeated complaint, or "escalate this".
• Its own answer didn't help — the visitor signals the previous reply fell short ("that didn't help", "still confused").
• Low confidence — the bot is genuinely unsure of its own answer. This is a separate switch, Auto-handoff on low confidence, and it deliberately skips casual "thanks / ok" messages so a polite goodbye never opens a ticket.

Detection works in any language. Both switches live in Dashboard -> Assistants -> [your bot] -> Experience -> Behavior, in the Intent Actions section, and are ON by default. Turn Live Agent Handoff off and the AI will never escalate on its own.

There is no other always-on trigger. If you want a handoff on a specific keyword, page, or topic, you add it yourself (below) — the AI does not silently escalate for anything beyond the signals above.

2. Handoff you design in a flow

For deterministic routing, add a Hand Off to Agent action node to a flow in Dashboard -> Flows. Start it from a Keyword Match, an Intent Detection, a button, or a Business Hours check, and every visitor who reaches that path is transferred — no guessing. This is how you escalate on your own rules (for example the word "refund", or one specific product page).

3. Manual takeover from the Live Inbox

An agent can jump into any live conversation at any time from Dashboard -> Live Inbox — even one the bot is handling fine. The moment an agent takes over, the AI stops replying and the person is in control.

What happens after a handoff

• An agent is online and you are within business hours → the conversation moves to that agent in the Live Inbox, with an AI-written summary (visitor details, sentiment, and what they need).
• No agent is available (after hours, or everyone is offline) → the bot creates a support ticket, asks for contact details if it does not already have them, and tells the visitor your team will follow up.

Set your schedule under Dashboard -> Assistants -> [your bot] -> Experience -> Business Hours. After hours the AI will not promise a live person it cannot deliver — it moves straight to the ticket / callback path.

> Tip: Keep Live Agent Handoff on so the AI can escalate the moment a visitor is stuck, and add a Hand Off to Agent node for the few cases you want routed every single time.