AI Chatbot Human Handoff: How to Hand a Chat to a Person
A good AI chatbot does not try to answer everything. It knows when a person should take over, and it makes that moment easy for your team. Human handoff is the part of a website chat that moves a conversation from the AI to someone on your team, without the visitor starting over. This guide shows how to set it up in OneType and what your team and your visitors see.
1. Decide when a chat should be handed over
A handoff starts in one of these ways:
- the visitor writes that they want a person, for example "talk to a human". Common phrases in English, German, French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Dutch and Serbian are caught right away;
- the visitor asks in other words, and the AI recognizes that they want a person;
- the visitor presses the button in the chat to reach your team. The button is always visible in Always mode; in Suggest mode it appears after the AI could not answer or the visitor asked for a person;
- by default, the first time the AI cannot answer it offers the visitor the button, and the second time in a row it hands the chat to your team. You can choose a contact form or an apology instead.
You choose per agent what happens when the AI does not know: hand the chat to your team, show a contact form, or simply apologize.
2. Turn handoff on for your agent
Handing a chat to your team needs a paid plan. Handoff stays off until you turn it on for the agent. Once it is on, visitors can ask for a person in their own words or with the button in the chat. Turn it on only for agents where someone on your team can realistically reply.
3. Set your opening hours
OneType offers a handoff only within the opening hours you set and while a team member who can reply is online. OneType sees whether anyone on your team has the dashboard open. If it is outside your hours, or nobody is online, the visitor gets a contact form instead, so nobody is left waiting and you can follow up.
4. Read the summary instead of the whole chat
When a chat is handed over, the visitor sees right away that the team is coming. In the background, the AI reads the recent conversation and writes a short summary: what the visitor wants, what was already tried and why it was not enough. The summary is written in the visitor's language, next to two quick signals: the visitor's intent in a few words, and their mood (negative, neutral or positive).
The summary appears on a card at the top of the conversation in your inbox. When you connect Slack, it also goes into the Slack message, so your team gets the same context there. The conversation is marked as escalated and moves to the top of your inbox, in the view called Needs attention.
5. Let the right people hear about it
Everyone who can reply to conversations gets a notification in the dashboard bell. Handoff emails go out only when nobody on the team is online. If the same alert happens again within ten minutes while the earlier one is still unread, you get one notification with a count instead of a long list. Notifications never quote what the visitor typed; they link to the conversation.
6. Take over, and hand back
Press Take over on the conversation and the reply box is yours. The AI stops answering while you hold the chat, and the visitor sees a short line saying that a person joined, with your first name. One conversation belongs to one teammate at a time, so nobody replies over someone else. When you are done, resolve the conversation or press Hand back to agent, and the AI answers the visitor's next message as usual.
Ready to set it up?
Try a handoff on your own site and see it arrive with its summary: read about AI handoff.