How to Enable Human Handoff

Human handoff lets your bot transfer a conversation to a live support agent. When the bot can’t answer a question — or when the user simply prefers talking to a person — the conversation is escalated.

Enable handoff

You can enable handoff during bot creation (in the Support step of the wizard) or afterwards:

Open your bot settings (gear icon in the Playground, or Edit on the Bots page).
Go to the Support tab.
Toggle Enable human handoff to ON.

Configure handoff behavior

Trigger mode

Choose when handoff is offered:

Trigger	Behavior
Button	A “Talk to a person” button appears in the widget. The user clicks it to request a human.
Auto	The bot automatically detects when it can’t help and offers to escalate.
Both	The button is always available, and the bot can also auto-escalate.

Offline message

Set a message for when no agents are available:

“Our team is currently offline. Leave your email and we’ll get back to you within 24 hours.”

If you don’t set one, a default message is shown.

Agent label

Set a display name for the human agent (e.g., “Support Agent” or “Sarah from Support”). This appears in the chat when a human takes over.

Agent availability

Toggle Agents Available to indicate whether your team is currently online:

ON — handoff is available. Users can connect to a live agent.
OFF — handoff shows the offline message instead.

Tip: Toggle this based on your support hours. Turn it on when agents are working, off when they’re not.

How it works for users

The user chats with the AI bot normally.
When handoff is triggered (by button click or auto-detection), the conversation is marked as Escalated.
The user sees the offline message or a confirmation that an agent will join.
The conversation appears in your Conversations page with an “Escalated” status for your team to respond.

Bot Settings Reference — all handoff settings
Review Conversations — see escalated conversations
Set Up a Customer Support Bot — full support bot tutorial