Three ways a handoff happens
Vex can connect a conversation to a human agent in three different ways, all governed by your Agent Handoff settings:
- Visitor asks for a human — Vex recognizes phrases like "I want to talk to a person" and asks the visitor to confirm before connecting them. Available when Automatic Agent Handoff is on.
- Vex can't answer — When the visitor's question falls outside your knowledge sources, Vex either declines politely or offers to connect them with a human. Your choice.
- Automatic handoff after N messages — Vex shows a "Talk to support" button after the visitor has sent a configurable number of messages in a short window.
Configure the "can't answer" behavior
Go to Automation → AI → your chatbot → AI Identity tab. Under When AI Doesn't Know Answer, choose:
- Politely decline (recommended): Vex says it doesn't have that information and suggests contacting support. No handoff — the visitor decides what to do next.
- Offer to connect with a human: If an agent is online, Vex asks the visitor whether they'd like to be connected and only hands off if they say yes. If nobody is online, Vex politely declines instead. This needs Automatic Agent Handoff turned on (next section).
Configure the "Talk to support" button
Go to the Agent Handoff tab. Here you control:
- Automatic agent handoff toggle: The master switch for human handoff. When on, Vex can offer to connect visitors with a human (and the "Offer to connect with a human" option above becomes available). When off, Vex won't offer or escalate to a human on its own — set up a Custom Workflow to handle requests instead.
- Handoff message: The message Vex sends just before connecting the visitor to a human. Customize it to set expectations ("Connecting you to a support agent — average wait is 2 minutes.").
- Show button after N messages: Default is 6 messages within the last 5 minutes. Lower this number if your visitors expect escalation quickly; raise it if Vex is handling most questions well.
Business hours and handoff
If no agents are online when a handoff happens, the conversation is queued in the inbox as an unassigned ticket. The visitor receives your standard offline message. To control offline messaging, configure business hours in Settings → Business hours.
What the visitor sees during handoff
- Vex asks the visitor to confirm — Yes to connect (or to leave their email if no agent is online), or No to keep chatting with Vex.
- Vex sends the handoff message.
- The conversation appears in the inbox as unassigned.
- An agent picks it up and continues from the same thread — the full Vex conversation history is visible to the agent.
Next step
Once handoff is configured, check how often Vex actually escalates: Find knowledge gaps Vex couldn't answer. High escalation rates usually mean missing knowledge sources.