Your agent handles most conversations alone, but some need a person. By the end of this guide the agent knows when to hand over, your team hears about it straight away, and you can step into a conversation and give it back to the AI when you're done.
You'll need
- The owner or manager role to change agents, conduct rules and policies.
- Anyone in the team can work escalations, take over conversations and add bookings.
- Scheduled callbacks need the voice channel, which comes with the Professional and Enterprise plans.
Decide when the agent hands over
Every agent can escalate. It's told to hand over when the customer asks for a person, when it can't answer with confidence, when a request is outside its scope, or when someone is upset. To sharpen that: 1. Open Policies and press New policy. On the Escalation tab, tick the rules you want, such as Explicit human request, Complaint escalation, Safety concern or Ready to purchase. Press Create policy. 2. For wording the agent must always follow, such as "offer a callback before ending the chat", add a rule under Conduct rules with New. 3. Open your agent from Agents, Clone its live version, and tick the policy and conduct rule. Under Conversation Options, set the Escalation Message customers see when they're handed over. Press Create Version, try it, then Promote it.
Make sure the right people hear
Every escalation notifies the whole team. Each person chooses how in their own notification settings: 1. Switch on In-App, Email or SMS for Escalation. For texts, add and verify a mobile number with Add SMS Number first. 2. Also worth checking: A lead is waiting on us, Appointment booked and Instant callback requests. 3. Press Save Preferences.
Pick up an escalation
- Open Escalations. It shows Action required by default, and Mine shows the ones assigned to you.
- Select one to read the reason, priority and latest message. Assign it to a teammate if it's theirs.
- Press Open in inbox.
Take over and reply
- In the inbox, press Take over. The agent stops replying and the customer is told someone has joined. Only one person can take over at a time.
- Type your reply and press Enter, or use Draft with AI and edit what it writes.
- To see every conversation a person is handling, set the Agent filter to Taken over by a human.
Hand it back
Press Release and the agent answers the next message. Then go back to the escalation and press Resolve escalation, adding a short note on what you did.
When they'd rather talk
- Call them later: in the conversation, choose Schedule follow-up, pick a call, a time and what it's about. Pending ones are on Follow-ups.
- Book a meeting: agents with Allow booking book appointments themselves. You can add one with New booking on Bookings, and your agents treat that time as busy.
Check it worked
On the new version, open Test chat and ask to speak to a person. The chat stops taking messages, an escalation appears on Escalations and you get a notification. It's a real escalation, so resolve it afterwards.
If something goes wrong
- Nobody was told: notification settings are personal. Ask each person to check theirs.
- The agent didn't hand over: open the policy and check Agents using this policy shows the version as live. A draft version doesn't answer customers.
- Take over isn't offered: a teammate may already have taken over.
See Escalations and The inbox for more.
Or ask the assistant: it can do these steps for you, asking before each change.