Set up and customize the customer agent's handoff process

After you've created your customer agent, you can manage how and when it hands off conversations across all channels from a centralized location. You can create custom handoff triggers and hand off the customer agent to a live human agent immediately, at a later time, or keep the customer agent assigned, allowing your team to efficiently handle live issues or manage follow-up once they're available

Additionally, you can route conversations to specific users or teams, or based on predefined conditions using ticket-based workflows, and customize handoff messages to ensure a seamless customer support experience.

Set handoff triggers 

By default, the customer agent is triggered to hand off to a human when the customer agent can’t answer the question, the visitor requests to speak to a human, or the agent is paused. To set custom triggers: 

1. In your HubSpot account, navigate to Service > Customer Agent. 
2. Navigate to the Manage tab. 
3. In the left sidebar menu, click Human handoff.
4. In the Custom triggers section, click the Pencil icon.
5. In the right panel, click + Add trigger. 
6. Use the text box to enter a word or phrase that will trigger a hand-off. (e.g., cancellation or refund.)
7. To delete a trigger, click the delete trash icon. 
8. Click Save. 
   
   

Edit the handoff process 

Choose to hand off the customer agent to a live human agent immediately, at a later time, or keep the customer agent assigned.

You can also route the conversation to users in an inbox or help desk, or enroll the ticket in a workflow to hand off tickets based on predefined conditions.

1. In your HubSpot account, navigate to Service > Customer Agent. 
2. Navigate to the Manage tab. 
3. In the left sidebar menu, click Human handoff.
4. Click Edit handoff process, then select one of the following handoff options:
   • Live handoff to a human agent: assign the conversation to the next available human agent immediately.
   • Async handoff to a human agent: assign the conversation to a human agent to follow up at a later time. 
   • Don't handoff to anyone: the conversation will not be handed off and the customer agent will continue to answer questions. 
     
     

5. If you chose to hand off your customer agent to a human agent, configure your assignment and messaging rules:
   
   • To route the conversation to an inbox or assign to specific users and teams, select I want to hand off all issues to the same users or teams:
     • Click the Choose where to send the conversation to dropdown menu and select an inbox or help desk. 
     • Click the Assign incoming tickets to dropdown menu and select users or teams.
       
       

• • To create a ticket from the conversation and enroll the ticket in a workflow, select I want to hand off issues to different users or teams based on a set of conditions: 
    • Click the dropdown menu and select a ticket-based workflow.
    •  This option is only available for help desk tickets. When selected, the customer agent will create a ticket and automatically move it to help desk. 
      
      

6. Use the text boxes to enter a message to display when your team is available or unavailable.
7. If you selected Live handoff to human agent and the ticket is unassigned due to a workflow, choose whether to keep the chat open or close it:
   • Keep the chat open: the chat status remains Open while the conversation stays in the Unassigned view. 
   • Close the chat: the chat status is set to Closed. 
8. In the bottom left, click Save. 

Customize handoff messages

You can customize the messages visitors see when they're transferred to your team, or if your team is unavailable.

1. In your HubSpot account, navigate to Service > Customer Agent. 
2. Navigate to the Manage tab. 
3. In the left sidebar menu, click Human handoff.
4. Use the text boxes to enter a message to display when your team is available, unavailable, or if the ticket is unassigned as a result of a workflow. The options shown will depend on the handoff process you selected.
   
   

Example workflow 

You can build a custom ticket-based workflow from scratch or use a pre-built template. The Reassign Tickets for Customer Agent Handoff template reassigns tickets by rotating the owner based on the originating channel, helping to facilitate customer agent handoff.

To use the Reassign Tickets for Customer Agent Handoff template: 

1. In your HubSpot account, navigate to Automation > Workflows.
2. In the upper right, click Create workflow > From template.
3. From the templates library, search for Reassign Tickets for Customer Agent Handoff.
4. Click Use template. The template will appear with placeholder actions. You can edit, add, and remove actions in the editor. Learn more about editing workflows. 

Learn more about managing the customer agent.