What is human handoff?

Human handoff is the transfer of a live conversation from an AI agent to a person, with the transcript and whatever the agent collected, so the customer does not repeat anything. It is the moment the agent stops replying and a teammate starts, in the same window. Intercom calls it escalation or handover, Zendesk escalation, Tidio handoff.

It matters because every AI support agent fails sometimes, and the handoff decides whether that failure costs you a customer. A handoff can be live, a person picks up within minutes in the same chat, or asynchronous, the conversation waits in an inbox and the person replies later, by chat or by email. Which one you can offer depends on who watches the inbox and when, and the agent should promise only what is true: "a teammate will pick up shortly" at 3 a.m. on a one-person team is a promise the visitor discovers alone.

Where the idea runs out: a handoff moves the problem; it does not solve it. The person needs the transcript, the visitor's email, the reason for the handoff and ideally a note from the agent, or the visitor repeats everything after all. The handoff is also what every containment and resolution figure is measured against, so a product that hands off rarely may be careful or may be answering what it should not. Watch what it hands off, not just how often.