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Hand off a conversation to your team by email

Let your intoCHAT agent email a conversation to your team when a visitor asks for a person: what the visitor sees, who gets the email, its contents and limits.

When a visitor asks for a person, your agent can pass the conversation to your team by email. Your team replies to the visitor from their own inbox, and the visitor gets the answer by email.

To have someone from your team join the chat window instead, use live chat. When live chat is on and someone from your team is online, a visitor who asks for a person gets live chat. Hand-off by email is used when nobody is online, or when the visitor would rather be contacted by email. See How it relates to live chat.

Hand-off by email is off by default. While it is off, the agent doesn't offer to pass the conversation on. Depending on your lead settings, it can still collect contact details so your team can follow up.

Turn it on

  1. Open your agent and go to the Setup tab.
  2. Under Hand-off to your team, switch on Offer hand-off by email.
  3. Click Save changes in the header.
  4. On the Leads tab, check who receives the emails. See "Who gets the email" below.
  5. Try it in the Playground: ask to talk to a person.

What the visitor experiences

  • The agent offers the hand-off only when the visitor asks to talk to a person, or when it can't help with their request and they want someone to follow up.
  • It first asks whether they want the conversation passed to the team by email, and asks for the address the team should reply to. If the visitor already left an email address in this chat, the agent suggests that one and lets them confirm it or give another.
  • Nothing is sent until the visitor agrees and gives an address.
  • The agent says the team has the message only when the email was actually sent. If sending failed, it says so and why.
  • It never promises a response time, a specific person, a phone call or live chat. It says the team will reply by email.

Who gets the email

The email goes to the people who receive lead alerts, set on the Leads tab under Email when a new lead arrives: your account email if Send to me is ticked, and every address under Also send to. If no one is set there, it goes to your account email. Hand-off emails are sent even while lead alerts are switched off, but the recipient fields are visible only while that switch is on. See Lead alerts and export.

Each recipient gets a separate email. The visitor's address is set as the reply address, so replying goes straight to them.

What the email contains

  • The subject: the agent's name, "a visitor asked for a person" and the visitor's email address.
  • The visitor's email address, to reply to.
  • The visitor's country and the page the chat started on, when known, and the time in UTC.
  • What they need: a short summary written by the agent, up to 1,000 characters.
  • The conversation: the chat so far, up to the last 60 messages. Longer conversations note how many earlier messages were left out.
  • A See the conversation button that opens the chat on the Conversations tab.

Limits

  • Each conversation can be handed off once every 10 minutes. If the visitor asks again within that time, the agent tells them the team already has the conversation.
  • Each agent can send up to 20 hand-offs an hour. Beyond that, nothing is sent and the agent tells the visitor it couldn't pass the conversation on.
  • Temporary chats can't be handed off, because nothing in them is saved. If a visitor asks for a person there, the agent tells them that leaving the temporary chat makes the hand-off possible.
  • Hand-offs from the Playground send a real email to the same recipients, with [Test] at the start of the subject.

The visitor's email address and your leads

The address the visitor gives for the hand-off is saved with the conversation. It is added to your leads only when Save contact details written in the chat is on (Leads tab, on by default) and the visitor typed the address in a message. Leads saved this way show the From chat badge.

Where hand-offs show up

  • On the Conversations tab, a handed-off conversation has a Handed off badge. In its transcript, the badge sits next to the visitor's reply address. See Conversations and stats.
  • Each hand-off also sends a handoff.requested event to your webhooks that subscribe to it.
  • If Slack alerts are connected with Hand-off request ticked, a message goes to your Slack channel too, with the visitor's address, the summary and a link to the conversation. Your team still replies by email.
  • If you connected Zendesk, Freshdesk or HubSpot under Helpdesk tickets, each hand-off also opens a ticket there, with the visitor's address as the requester. The transcript shows the ticket's number. See Helpdesk tickets.

How it relates to live chat

Hand-off by email and live chat are separate switches in the Setup tab, and they work together:

  • Both on, someone from your team online: a visitor who asks for a person gets live chat. The agent offers the hand-off by email only if the visitor would rather be contacted by email.
  • Both on, nobody online: the agent offers the hand-off by email, as described on this page.
  • Live chat on, but nobody joins within 5 minutes: with the visitor's next message, the agent says nobody from the team could join right now and offers the hand-off by email.
  • Only live chat on, nobody online: the agent doesn't offer a person.
  • Only hand-off by email on: the agent offers the hand-off whenever a visitor asks for a person, as before.

"Online" means someone has the Live chat inbox open; see When someone counts as online.

Next steps

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