In short
- One click to take over.Press Take over on any open conversation and the reply box is yours.
- The AI steps back.While you hold the chat, the AI does not answer the visitor at all.
- Visitors see you join.The chat shows that a person joined, with your first name.
- One person per chat.A conversation belongs to one teammate at a time, so nobody replies over someone else.
An AI agent is great at the questions you get every day. Some conversations still need a person: an upset customer, an unusual order, a sale that is almost closed. Human takeover lets your team step into any chat at the moment it matters, without the visitor starting over somewhere else.
How taking over works
Every conversation in your inbox has a Take over button. Press it and three things happen at once: the conversation is marked as yours, the AI stops answering, and the visitor sees a short line in the chat saying that you joined, with your first name. The reply box opens for you. Press Enter to send, or Shift and Enter for a new line.
From then on, everything the visitor writes waits for you. The AI does not jump in, even if you take a minute to reply. When you are done, you can resolve the conversation or press Hand back to agent. The visitor sees that the agent is back, and the AI answers their next message as usual.
One conversation, one person
When a teammate holds a conversation, the rest of the team sees who has it, and the reply box stays closed for everyone else. If two people press Take over at the same moment, only one gets it and the other is told right away. That keeps visitors from getting two different answers from two different people.
Sometimes a conversation needs to move, for example when someone goes home for the day. Owners and admins can press Take over anyway to take a chat from a teammate. Each of these takeovers is saved in the workspace's audit log, with who stepped in.
Where your team can take over
- In the inbox, with the Take over button on the conversation.
- From the command palette: press Cmd K or Ctrl K on a conversation and choose Take over.
- In Slack, with the Take over button on a handoff message, or by replying in its thread.
What the visitor sees
Visitors stay in the same chat window the whole time. They see a note when a person joins and another when the agent takes over again, so they always know who they are talking to. Your replies appear with your first name. When the visitor reads your reply, you see a small Seen label under it in the inbox, and you see when they are typing.
Who can do what
Taking over is part of Premium. Owners, admins and members can all take over and reply. Taking a conversation away from a teammate and deleting a conversation are for owners and admins only. Taking over does not use any AI credits, because the AI is not answering while you are.
What each plan includes, and how AI credits work, is on the pricing page.