Human handoff

When a widget visitor wants to talk to a person, the conversation moves to your team: the AI goes quiet and your agent takes over in the panel. This page covers how a handoff starts, working hours, teams, notifications and reports. Most settings live on the Widget Settings screen; the SMS provider and the WhatsApp line are set up on the Team alerts tab of the Messaging screen, and people's phone numbers on Users.

How does a handoff start?

Path	What happens
The visitor's button	The widget menu, its home screen and the message box all have a Talk to a person button. If the conversation hasn't started yet, the visitor's first message goes straight to the team without the AI.
An explicit request	Messages like "I want to talk to a human" or "I need a real person" hand off before the AI even runs. Product questions such as "how does the handoff feature work?" don't count.
The AI's offer	If the knowledge base has no answer for two questions in a row, or the visitor is upset, a "Shall I pass you to our team?" card appears (Yes, pass me on · No, continue). If the visitor says no, the AI doesn't insist.
The AI's promise	If the AI says "I'm transferring you to an agent", the handoff really happens — the visitor never waits for someone who isn't coming.
Your rules (Pro+)	Keyword, page, topic and order total rules — below.

Working hours

In Widget Settings, the working hours editor sets the weekly schedule: open or closed per day, several ranges a day (e.g. a lunch break), 24 hours, presets (weekdays, Mon–Sat, 24/7…) and applying one day's hours to weekdays or every day. Holidays and special days are a single day or a date range, closed or with special hours, optionally repeating every year. Add Turkish public holidays brings in the fixed-date public holidays in one click; religious holidays move every year, so add them year by year.

Situation	What the widget says
Within hours, someone in the panel	That the team is online; on handoff, that someone will be with the visitor shortly.
Within hours, nobody in the panel	The expected reply time, e.g. that the team usually replies within a few hours.
Outside working hours	That the team is outside working hours and when it's back (e.g. Monday 09:00) — even if someone has the panel open.

Email: replies don't get lost

• Email on handoff: when nobody from the team is in the panel (including outside working hours) the widget asks the visitor for an email address; when an agent is there it is optional.
• Replies by email too: if the visitor doesn't see the agent's reply in the widget within 45 seconds, it is also sent to the address they left. The Waiting for a reply tab on the Publishing → Email screen lists these conversations.
• Support email: where unassigned handoffs are announced, and the Reply-To address of replies sent by email. If left empty, the account owner's address is used.

Teams, assignment and rules

• Team: a name, members, notification channels and round-robin assignment (in turn, among members online in the panel). Everyone appears in the member list; people who can't manage the inbox or haven't accepted their invitation can't be picked, and the reason is shown next to them.
• Assignment email: when a conversation is assigned to a person, that person gets an email; assigned to a team, its members do. The person who made the assignment isn't emailed. The handoff email reaches each recipient in their own language.
• Who and since when: the conversation list shows how long the assignee has had it. The conversation header shows the assignee's name (or the team's, if no person is assigned); hover over it to see “Assigned: person · time · assigned by …” (or “assigned by a rule”).
• Team inboxes: once you have a team, Conversations shows an Inbox selector above the list: all conversations, assigned to me, unassigned and each team's own inbox, with unresolved counts (details).
• Taking over from a colleague: if another agent holds the conversation, Take over asks for confirmation; the conversation moves to you and the previous agent is told by email.
• Default assignment (Pro+): the team or person a handoff goes to when no rule matches.
• Handoff rules (Pro+): keyword and page rules run before the AI; a topic rule is added to the AI's instructions; an order total rule (e-commerce widget only) hands off when a verified order is over the threshold. The RAG and e-commerce widgets have separate rules.
• Internal notes and tags: notes are visible to your team only (never to the widget, emails or the AI); tags filter the conversation list.
• Waiting alert (Pro+): if a handed-off conversation stays unanswered for the time you choose, the assignee (otherwise their team, otherwise you) is alerted through the team's notification channels, plus a panel notification. No alerts outside working hours; the time then counts from opening. The wait ends when an agent writes.

Reply time target

The Reply time target card in Widget Settings says how long, at most, you want a customer to wait for a reply from an agent: 5, 15 or 30 minutes; 1, 2, 4, 8 or 24 hours (default: no target). Once the wait passes it, the Awaiting reply pill in Conversations turns red and says target missed. The Human handoff section of Reports shows how many handoffs were answered on target (details).

With working hours on, the clock only runs during working hours; without working hours it also runs at night and on weekends. The target doesn't alert anyone; the setting that tells the team about an unanswered handoff is the Waiting alert above.

Notifications: email, WhatsApp, SMS

Each team chooses the channels that announce its handoffs; unassigned handoffs use the general channels and a fallback number. The default is email only; the waiting alert uses the same channels.

Channel	How it works
Email	To the assignee or their team's members; for unassigned handoffs, to the support email.
SMS	Through your own SMS provider: Netgsm, İleti Merkezi, Verimor, Twilio, Vonage, Infobip, Plivo or a custom HTTP endpoint, connected on the Messaging › Team alerts tab. At most 60 SMS per hour per account.
WhatsApp	From your company's WhatsApp Business line, connected on the Messaging › Team alerts tab: your number connected to SemAgent, Meta WhatsApp Cloud API, 360dialog, Twilio or Infobip. At most 60 messages per hour per account.

• Phone numbers belong to people: entered with a country code when you add, invite or edit a user on the Users screen. Turkish numbers must be mobiles (WhatsApp and SMS don't reach landlines).
• WhatsApp template: WhatsApp only delivers business-initiated messages with an approved template. These screens show step-by-step setup for each provider and the single-variable template body to get approved in the Utility category: what is an approved template?
• Secret keys are stored encrypted and never sent back to the panel; leave the field empty to keep the saved one.
• Test message: sends a test to a number with the saved settings (at most 5 in 10 minutes). Before that, Verify connection checks the account and the sender ID or number without sending anything.

Who takes over?

The inbox is managed by roles whose Conversations row is set to "edit" in Roles & Permissions: by default Owner, Admin, Editor and Support agent; custom roles too. The Support agent role is made for this: it sees every Publishing screen and takes over and answers conversations, but can't change widget settings, rules or canned responses (it can use canned responses in chats).

Reports and learning

• Reports → Human handoff: how many widget conversations went to a person, how many the AI resolved alone, and how long the first human reply took. RAG and e-commerce are shown separately, and the first reply within and outside working hours; auto-closed conversations don't count as resolved.
• Reports → Agents: per person, conversations assigned, replied to and resolved, time to first reply, satisfaction and open work; filter by widget type, team and agent, and download as CSV (details).
• Satisfaction: Reports split scores between conversations the AI answered and those the team answered; a 1–2 rating emails the person assigned to the conversation (Alert me about low ratings).
• Teaching the right answer: Add to knowledge base in the ⋯ menu of an agent's reply in Conversations, and Write the right answer on a negative answer in Answer Review, add the Q&A to the knowledge base's Corrected answers folder; from then on the assistant answers that question with this answer.
• Article suggestions: handed-off questions and questions the AI couldn't answer from the knowledge base show up as suggestions on the Articles screen; the article you publish becomes the AI's answer next time.
• Suggested canned responses: replies your agents often write appear as suggestions in Widget Settings; none is added until you save it.