Recipe: Graceful Handover to a Team

A complete configuration that takes a stack from “the AI hands off whenever” to “the AI gathers what’s needed, hands off cleanly, and behaves correctly outside business hours.” Use this when you have one destination team and want a polished customer experience.

What you’ll end up with

• Handover mode: explicit_team (single destination team).
• Three prerequisites: account email (always), order ID (when about an order), description-of-issue (always).
• Outside-hours: email follow-up offered, no close-and-return, no ask-confirmation.
• A handoff message tone that matches your personality preset.

Before you start

• The stack and at least one specialist are configured.
• The destination team exists in Settings → Teams with members assigned and Opening Hours set.
• (Recommended) Conversation custom field for orderId exists. Without it, you can use a stock conversation field — but a custom field is cleaner. See Custom Fields.

Build the configuration

1. Turn on handover and pick the team

1. Open Settings → Agent Stacks → [stack] → Handover → Triggers.
2. Toggle Allow handover to humans on.
3. Switch to the Delivery sub-tab.
4. Mode: Explicit team.
5. Handover team: pick the destination team from the dropdown.
6. Handover instructions: leave blank or add a tone-shaping rule like “Apologize once for any wait if the conversation is more than 5 turns old, then hand off without further apology.”

2. Add prerequisites

Switch to the Prerequisites sub-tab and click Add requirement three times:

• 1 — contact.email — Always — “What’s the email address on your account?”
• 2 — conversation.orderId (or your custom field) — When “the conversation is about a specific order or transaction” — “What’s the order number this is about?”
• 3 — conversation.issueDescription (or notes) — Always — “Could you give me a one-sentence description of what’s not working?”

Reorder if needed using the up/down arrows. The AI will check each one in order before handing off.

3. Configure outside-hours behavior

Still on the Delivery sub-tab:

• Check opening hours: on
• Offer email follow-up: on (default)
• Offer close and return: off
• Ask confirmation: off

This means: during business hours, the AI hands off seamlessly. Outside hours, the AI offers email follow-up — the customer leaves an email and the AI confirms a reply will come during hours. The conversation queues to the team for handling at start-of-business.

4. Save and test

1. Click Save on the Delivery sub-tab.
2. Open the Testing tab and send a message that should trigger handover: “I want to talk to a human about my order #12345.”
3. The AI should ask for the account email (and accept the order number you already provided), then briefly ask for the issue description.
4. Confirm prerequisites are gathered before the handover triggers.
5. Verify the testing panel shows handover_pending → handed-off state.

Verify it worked

• The Prerequisites tab lists exactly three rows.
• The Delivery tab shows Mode: Explicit team and the team name.
• During a test conversation, the AI asks for missing prerequisites in the order you listed them.
• Outside-hours simulation (close the team’s hours temporarily, or test against a closed team) offers email follow-up rather than queueing immediately.

Variations

• Two-team setup with topic-based routing: switch mode to by_description and use Handover instructions to encode the routing rules (“Route billing issues to Billing Team. Route everything else to General Support.”).
• More prerequisites for high-value customers: add a fourth prerequisite — “loyalty tier” (when “the customer has not provided one”) — to capture context the human will want.
• Strict consent: turn Ask confirmation on if your team prefers customers to opt in explicitly before being put in a queue.

Troubleshooting

• Symptom: The AI sometimes hands off without asking for the email. Fix: prerequisites are best-effort — under risk-escalation logic the orchestrator can hand off urgently. Mark the email prerequisite condition as Always (not When) and check that no When condition matches first.
• Symptom: Outside-hours fires during business hours. Fix: double-check the team’s Opening Hours, including timezone. The AI uses the team’s hours, not the tenant’s. See Opening Hours.
• Symptom: Handover triggers but the conversation doesn’t appear in the team queue. Fix: confirm the team’s queue is configured and the team has at least one available member. Empty teams can receive handovers but no one will see them.

See also

• Configure handover
• Handover to humans
• Handover modes reference