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Routing & handoff

This guide covers how conversations get to the right person. There are three pieces: assigning conversations to a teammate (by hand), letting the AI hand a conversation off to a human when it's out of its depth, and auto-routing new conversations to agents with rules. Together they make sure nothing slips through and every customer reaches someone who can help.

Sections#

Assigning conversations to agents#

Every conversation can be assigned to one teammate, so it's clear who owns it. Open a conversation and use the Assign dropdown in the header — it lists everyone in your organization who can handle conversations (owners, admins, and agents). Pick a person and the conversation is now theirs; the dropdown shows the current assignee so you always know who's on it.

Assigning is manual and always wins: even if a routing rule put a conversation on someone, you can reassign it at any time and your choice sticks. (Rules only ever run once, when a conversation is first created — they never reassign something already in your inbox.)

The inbox: tiers, badges, and filters#

The conversations list is ordered to put what matters most at the top, rather than being strictly chronological. You'll see, in order:

  1. Conversations assigned to you that are unread — your own work, first.
  2. "Needs human" conversations that are unread — anything the AI has handed off and nobody has picked up yet.
  3. Everyone else, newest activity first.

Two badges help you scan:

  • You — marks conversations assigned to you.
  • Needs human — marks conversations the AI has escalated and that no agent has replied to yet. Once someone replies, the badge clears (the conversation has been picked up), even though the AI stays out of the thread.

If you'd rather not have the list reordered, use the filter chips at the top:

  • All (the default) — everything, in the tiered order above.
  • Mine — only conversations assigned to you.
  • Needs human — only the un-picked-up escalations.

Nothing is ever hidden — other agents' conversations stay visible and you can open any of them.

AI handoff to a human#

On channels where the AI replies automatically, it can decide a conversation needs a person — for example the customer is frustrated, the question is outside what it can answer, or the customer explicitly asks for a human. When that happens the AI hands off:

  • The conversation is marked "Needs human" and moves to the PENDING status.
  • It's routed to whoever the conversation is assigned to. If it isn't assigned to anyone, it goes to the shared "Needs human" queue for the whole team to see.
  • An ESCALATED notification is sent (see below).
  • The AI sends the customer one short, honest closing line — something like "I've flagged this for a teammate; they'll follow up as soon as they can." It never promises an instant reply.
  • The AI then goes quiet on that conversation. It won't reply again until a human explicitly hands it back.

From the customer's side, there's no jarring "you're being transferred" — just a friendly note that a person will follow up, and then your team takes over.

Picking it up vs. handing it back

Two things happen, on purpose kept separate:

  • Replying picks it up. As soon as an agent sends the first reply, the conversation drops off the Needs human tier — it's been claimed. The AI still stays out of the thread; the human now owns it.
  • Resume AI hands it back. When you're done and want the AI to take over auto-replies again, click Resume AI on the conversation. Only then will the AI start answering on that conversation again. (Closing or archiving the conversation also clears the handoff.)

Either way, the AI will naturally engage again the next time the customer starts a new conversation.

The AI control tools#

The AI's ability to hand off and to close conversations comes from two built-in control tools you can switch on or off in Settings → Tools, alongside your other agent tools:

  • request_human — lets the AI hand a conversation off to a human, as described above.
  • close_conversation — lets the AI close a conversation it has fully resolved. (It can't close a conversation that's been handed to a human.) If the customer writes back later, a fresh conversation simply starts.

Both are on by default. Unlike custom tools, you can't edit or delete them — they only have an on/off switch. If your team doesn't want the AI handing off or closing tickets, turn the relevant tool off and that behavior stops.

Auto-routing with rules#

If you'd rather not assign everything by hand, set up routing rules in Settings → Routing. A rule says, in effect, "new conversations on this channel go to this group of agents."

Each rule has:

  • A condition — match a whole channel type (for example, all Facebook conversations), a specific channel, or any combination. Leaving a condition blank means "any".
  • An agent pool — the teammates the rule routes to. With more than one agent, conversations are shared round-robin (taking turns), so the load is split evenly. Inactive teammates are skipped automatically.
  • An order — rules are checked top to bottom, and the first one that matches wins. Use the up/down controls to arrange them, with your most specific rules above the broad catch-alls.

A few things to know:

  • Rules run only when a conversation is first created. They never reassign existing conversations, and your manual assignments always take priority.
  • No rules means manual only — if you haven't created any, nothing is auto-assigned and your inbox works exactly as before. Small teams can ignore routing entirely.
  • A rule's assignee also feeds the AI handoff: if the AI escalates a conversation that a rule routed to Jane, the "Needs human" alert goes straight to Jane instead of the whole team.

The "Needs human" notification#

When the AI hands a conversation off, it fires the ESCALATED notification event. Like every other event, you control it in Settings → Notifications — turn it on or off per delivery channel (in-app, push, email, Slack, Discord, and so on). In-app is on by default, so escalations show up inside HelpStack out of the box. See the Notifications guide for the full grid and how scopes work.

Related#

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