Escalation & human handoff
When the agent can't help, a human takes over — with the full conversation already in front of them
The support agent handles the questions your knowledge base can answer. For everything else, the visitor hands the conversation to your team — and the agent gets out of the way. No ticket form, no starting over: your team picks up the same thread, with everything the visitor already said.
When the widget offers a human
Each project sets its own threshold: after a number of visitor messages (default 3), the widget shows a Talk to a human option. Set it low to route visitors to your team quickly; set it higher to let the agent try more answers first.
A visitor who explicitly asks for a person doesn't wait for the threshold. When a message reads as a request for a human — "talk to a real person", "get me an agent", "escalate this" — the widget surfaces Talk to a human immediately, however early in the conversation it happens. Nobody has to argue with the agent to reach your team.
Either way, escalating stays the visitor's choice: the option appears, and the visitor clicks it.
What the visitor sees
When the visitor chooses Talk to a human, a short recap appears in the chat — a sentence or two summarizing what they asked about and what's been covered, so they know the handoff carries their context and they won't have to repeat themselves. The Talk to a human option then disappears; a conversation escalates once.
How your team finds out
An escalation notifies your team through every channel the project has configured, plus the dashboard itself:
- Email — sent to the project's notify address, when one is set.
- Slack — posted via an incoming webhook to a channel of your choice, when one is set.
- Notification bell — the escalation always appears in the dashboard's notification feed, and the conversation is flagged Escalated in the team inbox so it stands out while triaging.
The agent stands down
Escalation isn't just a notification — it changes who's answering:
- While your team is on the way, if the visitor sends another message, the agent replies only with a brief holding note saying a human will follow up. It doesn't attempt an answer.
- Once a human replies, the agent goes fully silent. Every later visitor message reaches only your team.
The handoff is one-way by design: a conversation a human has taken over stays with humans. A visitor who asked for a person is never bounced back to the agent mid-conversation.
From there it's a normal team conversation — replies from the inbox reach the visitor in the widget, and by email when they shared an address. See Email threading for how those replies stay in one thread.
Configuration
The threshold, notify email, and Slack webhook all live on the project's Behavior tab. Escalation in the dashboard walks through each setting and how escalated conversations look in the inbox.