Handoff and taking over
When the agent hands a chat to your team, how to take it over, and how to hand it back.
At any moment a conversation is either with the AI agent or with your team. This page explains how it moves between them. (Owners and managers)
Conversation statuses
| Status | Meaning | Does the AI reply? |
|---|---|---|
| AI agent | The agent is handling the chat | Yes |
| Needs you | The agent handed it over, or the lead was qualified and is waiting for your team | If handed over: no. If only qualified: yes, until someone replies |
| With team | A teammate has taken over (shows With their name) | No |
| Closed | The conversation is done | No |
When a chat goes to Needs you
| What you see under Handoff reason | What happened |
|---|---|
| The reason the agent wrote, e.g. "The customer wants to negotiate the price" | The agent handed over itself: the customer asked for a person, complained, had a payment or contract issue, wanted to negotiate, asked something it couldn't answer, or a rule from When to hand off to a human matched |
| "The AI agent is turned off" | The agent is switched off on the AI agent page |
| "AI conversations used up for this month" | Your plan's AI conversations ran out. AI conversations |
| "The AI couldn't reply (technical issue)" | Something went wrong while replying |
When the agent hands over itself, the chat gets High priority, the agent tells the customer a teammate will continue, and the owner and managers get a "Needs you" notification.
When a lead is qualified, the chat also shows under Needs you with the summary (High priority if the lead is Hot), but the agent keeps answering the customer until someone takes over.
Take over
Click Take over in the header. The AI stops replying, and the chat becomes With team and assigned to you.
Your first reply takes over automatically
If you just type a reply and send it, that pauses the AI in this chat and assigns it to you, even without clicking Take over. You'll see "Sending a message pauses the AI in this conversation" above the box. Internal notes don't pause the AI.
Hand back to the AI
Done with your part and want the agent to continue? Click Hand back to AI. The agent will answer the customer's next messages. If the customer is waiting for an answer right now, use Let the AI reply now from the ⋮ menu.
Close the conversation
From the ⋮ menu choose Close conversation when it's done. If the customer writes again later, the chat opens again with the AI agent. You can also open it by hand with Reopen.
Each of these changes is logged in the chat as a System message, so the team knows who did what.