Docs/Human Handoff/Configuration

Configure Human Handoff

There's no dedicated "Human Handoff" settings page. Configuration is spread across up to three places depending on the channel, because each channel triggers handoff differently under the hood. This page covers all of them.

Website widget: a Human Handoff AI Action

On the website widget, handoff isn't automatic — it only fires if you create an AI Action of type Human Handoff on the agent. Configuration happens on the agent's AI Actions tab, the same place you'd set up an email or webhook action.

Open your agent → AI Actions

In the agent's dashboard, click the AI Actions tab, then Add Action.

Set the type to Human Handoff

Give it a name (e.g. "Talk to a person") and a When to use description. The AI reads this description to decide, in its own judgement, whether the current message warrants a handoff — even without an exact keyword match.

Add Trigger keywords

Comma-separated phrases such as talk to a human, speak to an agent, real person. Matching is case-insensitive; single-word triggers need a whole-word match (so "agent" won't match inside "agentic"), and multi-word phrases match anywhere in the message. These matching rules are shared with every other action type — see AI Actions → How triggering works below for the details.

Save and test

Open the Preview chat and type one of your trigger phrases, or ask something the agent genuinely can't answer and see whether it fires the action on its own. If the visitor hasn't given contact details yet, triggering it shows the lead-capture form first; once details exist, the conversation is moved into the handoff state machine directly.

ℹ️

There's no separate settings screen for this — it's just one of the four action types. See AI Actions → Overview for the full Add Action form and how trigger matching works.

WhatsApp, Messenger and Instagram: built in, not configurable

These three channels don't need a Human Handoff action at all. Every conversation on them already carries a system-prompt instruction telling the AI: hand off if you can't answer the question, or if the visitor explicitly asks for a person — and mark it high priority if they sound distressed or the situation is urgent. There's no setting to turn this off or reword it per agent; it applies uniformly across all three channels.

⚠️

Because this is automatic, adding a Human Handoff AI Action to an agent that also has WhatsApp, Messenger or Instagram connected doesn't change anything on those channels — the action's Trigger keywords only apply to the website widget.

Zoho Desk: choose what creates a ticket

If you've connected the Zoho Desk integration, its Trigger setting decides when a support ticket is created for a conversation's lead — and creating a ticket is itself a handoff trigger, regardless of which of the four options caused it.

Go to Integrations → Zoho Desk

Open the connected integration's settings page.

Pick a Trigger

One of four options decides when a ticket — and therefore a handoff — gets created:

•AI determines support is needed (default) — a ticket is created only when the AI itself judges the conversation needs a human.
•Customer requests a human — a ticket is created when the visitor's message matches an explicit "talk to a person" style phrase. This is the only option that also runs a dedicated phrase-detector against every website-widget message, independent of any AI Action you may have configured.
•Complaint or refund detected — a ticket is created when the AI detects a complaint, dispute or refund request.
•AI cannot resolve the query — a ticket is created when the conversation ends without a resolution.

Save

Whichever trigger fires, once a Zoho Desk ticket is actually created for the conversation's lead, the conversation is moved into the handoff queue automatically (waiting_for_agent) and a 4-hour SLA deadline is set — see Escalation Rules for how that deadline is enforced.

Overview

Escalation Rules

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