Setting up live-chat handoff from bot to human agent

Updated 2026-09-19 · 5 min read · By the Convo360 team

When to hand off, and to whom

Three handoff triggers cover almost every business:

• Keyword: the customer types 'agent', 'human' or 'talk to someone'. Simplest to build, and a good safety net on every bot.
• No-match / fallback: the AI genuinely doesn't know the answer, even after checking its knowledge base.
• Sentiment: the customer sounds frustrated or is repeating themselves. Convo360 doesn't have a separate 'sentiment' feature; you build this yourself with an AI Reply step whose only job is to classify the last message (e.g. 'Is this customer frustrated? Answer yes or no') into a Set Variable, which a Condition step then branches on.

A fourth, less obvious trigger worth adding: repetition. If your flow tracks how many times a contact has sent a message inside one conversation without reaching a resolution (a simple counter in a Set Variable, incremented each turn), route to a human once it passes three or four. A customer typing the same question a fourth time is telling you the bot has failed, whether or not their words sound frustrated.

Before building any of this, decide who should actually receive the handed-off chat: one shared inbox, or assigned to a specific teammate.

Building the handoff in the flow builder

1. Add a keyword trigger flow (or a branch inside your main flow) that matches 'agent', 'human', 'talk to someone', etc.
2. For sentiment-style handoff, insert an AI Reply step right after the customer's message that classifies tone into a variable, then a Condition step that checks it.
3. On the matched branch, add a Send Message step telling the customer a person is joining ('Connecting you to our team, one moment').
4. Optionally add a webhook or notification step so a teammate's phone or Slack pings immediately.
5. The conversation now simply sits in Live Chat waiting for a human. Convo360 doesn't need a special 'end of bot' block; a teammate clicking Take over pauses the AI regardless of how the conversation got there.

Worked example: a frustrated customer

Customer: 'This is the third time I'm messaging about my refund, nobody is helping me.' The AI Reply classification step reads this, sets frustrated = yes, the Condition branch fires, the bot replies 'I'm sorry about that, connecting you to a teammate right now,' and the chat appears in Live Chat tagged for a Supervisor to assign. The teammate clicks Take over, the AI stops responding automatically, and they handle the refund personally. When it's resolved, clicking Hand back lets the bot resume for that contact's future messages.

Note what didn't happen: the customer never had to repeat their problem to the teammate. Because the whole history sits in the same Live Chat thread with the contact's record attached, the teammate can scroll up and see the original complaint, the order number if one was captured earlier, and any CRM notes. That continuity is the entire point of routing handoff through Live Chat rather than starting a fresh conversation on a different tool.

Roles: who sees the handed-off chat

Live Chat visibility follows your team roles: Owners and Admins see everything; Supervisors can oversee and assign any conversation; Agents only see chats assigned to them; Viewers get read-only access to transcripts. Assign handed-off conversations explicitly to a teammate rather than leaving them in a shared pile, so nothing sits unanswered.

It also helps to agree internally on a simple rule: any conversation sitting unassigned in Live Chat for more than a few minutes should be picked up by whoever is free, not left for a specific person. Supervisors can reassign on the fly, so treat the inbox as a shared queue first and a set of personal to-do lists second. That keeps response times honest even on a busy day.

Troubleshooting

What to test before going live

• Type each keyword yourself from a test number and confirm the handoff message and Live Chat entry appear.
• Send a deliberately frustrated-sounding message and check the classification branches correctly, then a calm one, to confirm it doesn't over-trigger.
• Take over, reply, then Hand back, and send another message to confirm the bot resumes.
• Log in as an Agent-role teammate and confirm they only see conversations assigned to them.

There's no extra cost for Live Chat itself, it's part of the Convo360 team inbox.

Also worth deciding early: what the bot says the moment it hands off. A vague 'someone will be with you shortly' reads worse than a specific one: 'connecting you to our support team, usually a reply within 10 minutes during business hours' sets an honest expectation the customer can actually judge you against.

Step by step

1. Add a handoff keywordIn the flow builder, create a keyword trigger for words like 'agent' or 'human' that routes to a handoff message.
2. Branch on no-matchIn the AI agent's flow, route repeated unanswered questions to the same handoff message instead of guessing again.
3. Monitor Live ChatKeep the Live Chat inbox open or check it regularly; assign conversations to the right teammate.
4. Take overClick Take over on a flagged conversation — the AI pauses automatically once you reply.
5. Hand it backOnce resolved, return the conversation to the bot so it continues handling routine messages.

Example conversation

Frequently asked questions

Related reading

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