Handing Off to a Human Agent

Handing Off to a Human Agent

Your chatbot is smart, but it can't answer everything. When a visitor needs a real person, the bot can pass the conversation to one of your teammates. This is called a handoff (or "escalation"). This guide explains when it happens, how to make sure someone is ready to catch it, and what the visitor sees along the way.

What triggers a handoff?

A handoff happens automatically in any of these situations:

• Low confidence — the bot isn't sure of its answer. "Sure" here is measured against the confidence level you set in Guardrails. If the bot's confidence drops below your threshold, it hands off instead of guessing.
• Visitor frustration — the bot detects that the visitor is upset (angry wording, repeated complaints).
• A clear request for a person — the visitor types something like "talk to a human" or "I want an agent."
• Message limit reached — the conversation has gone back and forth more times than you allow before looping in a human.
• Keyword triggers — words you choose (for example refund, cancel, legal) instantly send the chat to a person.

You don't have to set all of these up. The confidence and frustration triggers work out of the box; keywords and limits are optional extras you control in Guardrails.

Step 1: Add the agents who can take over

Before a handoff can work, at least one teammate has to be assigned to the bot.

1. Open your bot's settings.
2. Go to the Agents tab.
3. Add the teammates who should receive handed-off chats.

If nobody is assigned here, handed-off conversations will just sit in the queue with no one to answer them, so don't skip this step.

Step 2: Turn on notifications

So your agents actually notice a waiting visitor:

1. Go to the Notifications tab in the bot's settings.
2. Turn on email and/or browser notifications.

Now, whenever a chat is handed off, assigned agents get pinged.

What "Queued" means

When the bot hands off, the conversation's status changes to Queued. Think of Queued as "a human is needed here, but nobody has grabbed it yet." You'll see queued chats in the Unified Inbox (left sidebar → Communication → Unified Inbox) and in the Chatbots inbox. Filter by the Queued status to see only the ones waiting for a person.

Step 3: Take over the conversation

1. In the inbox, open a Queued conversation.
2. Read the history — everything the bot and visitor said is right there.
3. Click Take Over.

The moment you click Take Over, the bot steps back and stops auto-replying. Now you're the one talking to the visitor. The status changes from Queued to Agent so your teammates know it's handled.

If you want help writing your reply, the AI Copilot panel on the right can Draft a response for you — you stay in control and can edit it before sending.

What the visitor sees

Handoffs are smooth for the visitor. They don't get bounced to a different window or told to start over. The chat simply continues in the same widget — first with the bot, then with you. Depending on your setup, they may see a short "connecting you to a team member" style message while they wait in the queue.

Quick recap

• Handoffs fire on low confidence, frustration, "talk to a human," message limits, or your keywords.
• Assign people in the Agents tab, or nobody can answer.
• Turn on alerts in the Notifications tab.
• A handed-off chat becomes Queued; an agent clicks Take Over to reply, moving it to Agent.
• The visitor keeps chatting in the same window the whole time.