Overview

The Handoff feature lets your AI agent automatically transfer a conversation to a human team member. You can define exactly when this happens — for example when a customer explicitly asks to speak to a person, or after a set number of unanswered messages.

How to Set Up Handoff

1. Go to AI Agents and open your agent.
2. Click Handoff in the left sidebar.
3. Toggle "Hand off outside business hours" if you want conversations forwarded automatically when no one is available.
4. Click + to add a handoff trigger.
5. Configure the trigger phrase and choose the team member or team to assign to.

Business Hours vs. Outside Business Hours

Bugalou shows two response previews:

• During business hours — the agent bridges to a team member immediately.
• Outside business hours — the agent informs the customer that no one is available and asks them to try again the next business day.

Auto-Forward After Unanswered Messages

You can also set the agent to hand off a conversation after a certain number of messages have gone unanswered by a team member. Configure this at the bottom of the Handoff page.

Notifications while the AI agent handles a conversation

As long as the AI agent is handling a conversation, your team gets no pop-up or push notification for each customer message. You're only notified when a person is needed. An automatic assignment to a team member (round-robin) also counts as a handoff.

New message in a closed ticket

Does a customer send a new message in a closed ticket on WhatsApp, Messenger, Instagram or e-mail? Then the ticket stays closed while the AI agent answers. Your team gets no pop-up or push notification for it: the customer is talking to the AI.

The ticket only reopens (and your team is notified) when:

• the customer asks for a person — a system line in the conversation says the ticket was reopened because the customer was connected to a team member.
• the AI doesn't answer — for example because there's no agent for that channel, no credit left, an error occurs, or the customer sends a photo or file. A system line in the conversation then says the ticket was reopened because of a new customer message.

The reopened ticket stays with the team member it was previously assigned to, so it shows up in their own assigned conversations again.

E-mail

Even after an e-mail ticket has been closed, the AI agent answers a new e-mail from the customer again. Previously, the agent stopped once a ticket was closed.

Website chat

If a visitor asks for a team member in the website chat form, a closed chat reopens and your team is notified.

How long can your team still reply?

The AI agent always answers within 24 hours of the customer's last message (it answers immediately anyway). When a team member takes over the conversation, the channel's reply windows apply: on WhatsApp you can only send an approved template after 24 hours; on Messenger and Instagram a team member can reply from the inbox up to 7 days after the customer's last message. Read more in Reply windows: 24 hours and 7 days.

Tips

• Keep the handoff message short and friendly — the customer should feel reassured.
• Set up business hours under Settings → Business Hours so Bugalou knows when team members are available.
• You can combine handoff triggers with automations for more advanced routing.