Human Hand-off: AI for the volume, a human for what matters

What Human Hand-off is and who it’s for

Human Hand-off is how a MyChatBot sales or support assistant and your team share the same conversations. The AI answers the routine volume on every connected channel. When a chat needs judgement, a decision or simply a person, it moves to operator mode: the AI goes quiet in that chat, a teammate replies from the shared inbox, and the assistant resumes when the work is done.

It is built for teams that automate customer conversations but can’t afford to lose the important ones: shops handling complaints and custom orders, service businesses where a manager confirms the details, agencies and SaaS teams running a support desk. If you run an AI support agent, hand-off is the safety net that makes full automation practical.

It is part of the Sales Platform assistant, the AI that answers your customers. Rules are set per assistant, and the takeover happens per chat, so one conversation can be with a person while the rest stay with the AI.

How a hand-off works in MyChatBot

A hand-off starts the moment a chat switches from AI to a human. It can happen in four ways, depending on what you enable under Handoff Control:

1. The agent hands over by itself. Its instructions decide when, for example when a customer is upset or asks for a manager. The chat is flagged in the Attention queue and switches to operator mode, marked Need operator.
2. An operator replies. With Implicit operator handoff, any message from an operator switches the chat to operator mode, so nobody races the bot.
3. An operator types the stop word. With Stop word for manual handoff, only that keyword switches the chat; other operator messages don’t interrupt the AI.
4. Someone flips the AI switch in the chat header in Active chats.

The hand-off finishes when the chat returns to AI: a teammate turns the AI switch back on, or Auto return from handoff does it after the configured interval. The customer stays in the same thread throughout, and the operator sees the full message history and the client card.

Key capabilities

• Silent handoff. The client is not notified when the chat switches between AI and operator, so they see one continuous conversation.
• Operator notification. The agent can flag a chat for a human, for a hot lead or a question it can’t answer, while the AI keeps talking.
• Flight Control. Link a Telegram group to the assistant, and operator notifications arrive there with the client’s name, phone, email and a link to the chat. The same group lets your team get information from the agent and give it tasks.
• Attention and Operator tabs. Flagged chats get a red pulsing dot and sound alerts, and Mark as handled clears the flag. The Operator tab lists every chat where AI is off.
• Response timers. In operator mode the chat header shows First response, which turns red after 2 minutes, and Processing time since the latest hand-off.
• Operator helpers. Generate reply drafts an answer from the chat history and assistant instructions for review. Run assistant once sends a single AI reply while the chat stays in operator mode.
• Quality Control. This page shows Total handoffs, Replied handoffs, Avg first response and Total proc. time for each manager, plus a Quality score from an AI reviewer that rates finished hand-offs. It is visible to account admins.

Channels and integrations involved

Hand-off works wherever the assistant talks to customers, because every conversation lands in the same Active chats inbox: the Website Widget, WhatsApp Business and personal WhatsApp, Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, Telegram, Viber, email and SMS. One assistant applies the same Handoff Control rules on all of its channels.

Phone calls have their own mechanism. In the Calls channel, turn on Transfer to human operator and set the Operator number, an optional Phone line and a Transfer Condition, for example when the caller asks for a manager. It works for phone calls only, not for the Web SDK. The transcript and a playable recording appear in the client’s chat. More on Voice AI.

In operator mode your team works the lead from the client card: pipeline status, labels, manager, notes and tasks. If you use a CRM integration such as KeyCRM, SalesDrive, Bitrix24, Kommo, Zoho, Salesforce, GoHighLevel or HubSpot, you can import its funnel stages with Sync statuses. The sync is one-way, from the CRM into MyChatBot, so run it again after you change stages in the CRM. See all integrations.

When a human takes over, and the limits to know

The agent escalates only when its instructions tell it to. Describe the conditions plainly in the assistant’s instructions: which situations need just a notification and which need a full hand-off.

• Stop word and Implicit operator handoff are mutually exclusive: the keyword field is disabled while implicit mode is on, and implicit mode is disabled while a keyword is set.
• Auto return from handoff re-enables the agent after 24 hours by default. The Custom return interval accepts 1 to 10080 minutes. Disable Auto return after manual toggle-off to keep chats switched off by hand with a human.
• Work Hours are not a hand-off. Outside the schedule the assistant is paused with no away reply, and it doesn’t return to the off-hours backlog, so an operator should sweep those chats.
• In the Test Dialog, hand-offs and operator notifications are simulated, so nobody gets pinged. Test the full loop on a real channel.
• If the account balance runs out, assistants switch off on every channel. After topping up, check each assistant’s status switch: it does not always turn back on by itself.

How to set up Human Hand-off

1. Open Agents, pick the assistant and expand Settings. In Handoff Control, choose Implicit operator handoff or Stop word for manual handoff, decide on Silent handoff and Auto return, set a Custom return interval if 24 hours doesn’t fit, and click Save.
2. In Flight Control, click Open in Telegram and invite @mcbassistant_bot to your team group. The group links to the assistant automatically, one group per assistant.
3. In the instructions editor, describe when the agent should send an operator notification and when it should hand the chat over.
4. Add teammates under Team, Operators and set each operator’s Access scope: the agents whose chats they can see.
5. Run the loop on a real channel: message the assistant, reply from Active chats, check that the chat moves to the Operator tab and the First response timer freezes, then flip AI back on.
6. For phone calls, enable Transfer to human operator in the Calls channel settings.

One assistant can serve all your channels with the same hand-off rules. On the Standard and Pro plans only one assistant stays active at a time, see pricing.