Human handover

A human handover is the moment an AI agent passes a customer conversation to a person on your team. It happens when the customer asks for someone, when a keyword you defined comes up, or when the agent cannot help. A good handover carries the full history and a summary, so the customer never has to repeat themselves.

What is a human handover?

An AI agent answers routine questions on its own. When a request needs a person, it hands the conversation to your team. That handover decides whether automation helps your customers or frustrates them. Done well, the customer simply notices that a person is now replying. Done badly, they start from scratch.

When should an AI agent hand over?

Four triggers have proven themselves:

  • The customer asks for a person. An agent should always respect that.
  • A keyword comes up that you set in advance, such as complaint, cancellation or emergency.
  • The agent cannot help, because the question is outside its job or too sensitive.
  • The agent decides on its own that a person is the better fit, for example when the tone turns tense.

What makes a good handover?

An example: one evening, Ms Smith writes on WhatsApp that her parcel arrived damaged. The agent asks for the order number and a photo, recognises a complaint and hands over. The next morning, your colleague sees the full history, the photo and a short summary in the shared inbox. They can reply straight away instead of asking everything again.

Three things belong in a good handover:

  1. The complete conversation history, so nobody has to guess.
  2. A summary for the team. It is an internal note, the customer does not see it.
  3. Clear ownership, so the conversation does not sit unnoticed.

How does handover relate to other metrics?

The handover is the visible part of a bigger principle: with human-in-the-loop, your team stays in control of what the AI does. How often an agent hands over shows up in the automation rate. Few handovers are not a goal in themselves, though. An agent that never hands over leaves customers alone with hard questions, and metrics like the containment rate make that easy to miss.

How does handover work in SendSeven?

The SendSeven AI agent for customer service hands over on exactly these triggers: when the customer asks for a person, on up to 50 keywords per agent that you define, when it cannot help, or when it judges that a person should take over. Your team sees the whole conversation plus a summary. Tags and assignment rules decide who gets it. This works on WhatsApp, Instagram, Messenger, Telegram, Live Chat, email and SMS. AI agents are included from the Professional plan.