When to hand off
- Customer explicitly asks for a person
- AI cannot find a reliable answer
- Complaint or unhappy customer
- Negotiation or special pricing
- Sensitive account or personal issue
- High-value opportunity requiring sales judgment
- Policy exception
- Repeated misunderstanding
What a good handoff contains
The human should receive enough context to continue naturally: what the customer wants, what information has already been captured, what the AI answered and what question remains unresolved.
Avoid the worst handoff experience
Do not transfer a customer and then ask them to start again from zero. The purpose of AI-assisted handoff is to reduce repetition for both the customer and your team.
Design operational ownership
Define who receives the handoff, when they are expected to respond, what happens outside business hours and whether the AI should stay silent while a human is active. Handoff is an operational process, not only a chatbot feature.
Review escalations to improve the system
Escalated conversations are one of your best sources of product intelligence. Review them weekly to find missing knowledge, confusing instructions and new customer questions that deserve a structured answer.