Live chat handover is the moment an automated conversation is passed to a person, along with everything the customer has already said.
Why it is the part that decides whether customers accept automation
Nobody minds a bot that helps. People mind a bot they cannot get out of. The handover
is where goodwill is kept or lost, and it is usually the least designed part of a
deployment.
Done properly the customer barely registers it. They explain the problem once, the
conversation continues, and the person who takes over already knows the order number. Done
badly the customer types “human” four times, gets a form, and starts again from the
beginning.
The four triggers worth setting
- The customer asks. Non-negotiable, and it should work on the first
attempt, in any phrasing. - The request exceeds a limit you set. A refund above your ceiling, a
discount beyond your rule, a promise about a delivery date you have not authorised. The
limit is the trigger, and it belongs in the software, not in the model’s instructions. - The system does not know. Better a handover than an invented answer.
See AI hallucination. - The conversation is going badly. Repeated questions, a complaint, or
language that signals real frustration.
The three failures customers notice
No context carried across. The customer repeats everything. One
merchant phrasing of this: “the customer should not have to repeat the order number.” If
your tool cannot pass the transcript and the identified customer record, it is not a
handover, it is a transfer to the start of the queue.
A handover into nobody. Promising a person at 2am when the next person
arrives at 9am is worse than saying so. Say when, or do not offer.
No visible change. If the customer cannot tell whether they are now
talking to a person, they will test it, usually rudely. Make the switch explicit.
The other direction
Handover back matters too. After the person resolves the complaint, the automation
should be able to pick the thread up again for the next routine question, without the
conversation being stuck in a human queue forever.
A practical requirement to put on any shortlist: your team should be able to take over
from wherever they are, including a phone. The alternative is that handover works only
during the hours somebody is at a desk, which is the problem you were solving.
Related terms
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