Human Handoff Inbox

When an AI agent cannot resolve an issue or a customer requests to speak with a human, the conversation is escalated to the Human Handoff Inbox.

What Triggers a Handoff

• The customer explicitly asks to speak with a human
• The agent determines it cannot resolve the issue (billing disputes, complex bugs, account deletions)
• The conversation exceeds the agent's knowledge or capabilities
• The agent's SOUL.md rules define specific escalation conditions

Viewing Handoffs

1. Go to Agents → Handoff Inbox in your workspace.
2. You'll see a list of pending handoffs with:
   • Customer name and contact info
   • The agent that escalated
   • Summary of the conversation
   • Timestamp

Responding to Handoffs

1. Click on a handoff to view the full conversation history.
2. Review what the customer asked and what the agent attempted.
3. Respond directly to the customer in the live thread, add private internal notes, or reassign ownership.
4. Mark the handoff as resolved when complete.

The live conversation view supports:

• public replies back into the widget conversation
• internal notes that stay private to operators
• reassignment to another teammate
• quick replies/macros
• conversation metrics

The operator thread now refreshes from both realtime events and a fallback live refresh path, so it stays current even if a realtime insert is delayed or missed.

Configuring Handoff Settings

When creating an agent (via the Support Wizard), you can configure:

• Strategy — How handoffs are assigned:
  • Round Robin — Distribute evenly across team members
  • First Available — Assign to whoever picks it up first
• Assignee Emails — Team members who receive handoff notifications
• Max Open Assignments — Limit how many active handoffs each person handles
• Skill Keywords — Route handoffs based on topic (e.g., billing, shopify, integrations)

At the moment, the Support Wizard's handoff routing config applies to Website Widget conversations. Treat the widget as the canonical live-chat handoff surface.

Customer Experience During a Live Handoff

When a human teammate has joined a Website Widget conversation:

• the customer stays on the same chat thread
• follow-up customer messages continue to persist into that thread
• the system does not add fake bot queue/offline replies on top of a live human-owned thread
• CSAT is shown only after the handoff is resolved

The public widget and the internal support bubble now use the same underlying conversation client, so refreshes and human replies stay in sync more reliably.

Best Practices

• Check the Handoff Inbox during your team's normal response windows
• Configure email notifications so handoffs don't go unnoticed
• Review handoff patterns to improve your agent's SOUL.md — if the same questions cause handoffs repeatedly, add answers to the agent's knowledge