Set up and customize customer agent's handoff process

After creating your customer agent, you can manage how and when it hands off conversations across all channels from one centralized location.

Customize handoff guidelines, messages, and routing rules for email and chat channels to help your team efficiently handle live issues or follow-up once they're available. You can also apply tailored handoff guidelines to specific customer agent segments, ensuring each customer receives support that meets their needs. 

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Before you get started 

Before you begin working with this feature, make sure to fully understand what steps should should be taken ahead of time.

Create custom handoff guidelines

By default, customer agent hands off the conversation to a human when it can’t answer the question, the visitor requests to speak to a human, or the agent is paused.

You can also create custom handoff guidelines based on your specific needs. For example, you might trigger a handoff if a visitor mentions Cancellation, Refund, or Can't log in. Once handoff is triggered, you can then customize the handoff process.

To set custom handoff guidelines:

1. In your HubSpot account, click More, then navigate to Service > Customer Agent. If More doesn't appear in your account, navigate to Service > Customer Agent directly.
2. In the left sidebar menu, click Train > Human handoff.
3. Click + Create guidelines. 
4. In the right panel, enter your guideline details: 
   • Enter a guideline name. 

   • You can apply guidelines to all customers or specific customer agent segments to tailor the handoff experience:

     • To apply the guidelines to all customers, click the Segment dropdown menu and select All.
     • To apply the guidelines to a specific group of customers, click the Segment dropdown menu and select a customer agent segment. Learn more about creating customer agent segments. 
   • In the Instructions field, enter guidelines that define when customer agent should hand off to a human agent. This can include specific conditions, words, or phrases that trigger a handoff.
   • For example, When the customer requests to speak with a human or uses any of the handoff phrases below, you must immediately initiate a handoff to a human representative. "Cancellation", "Refund".
   • To use a prebuilt template, click the + Insert template dropdown menu and select a template.
     
     
5. Click Save.

Edit the handoff process by channel 

You can configure how customer agent hands off conversations to your team. Choose whether to hand off conversations immediately, assign them for follow-up, or keep customer agent assigned.

You can also route conversations to specific users or teams in an inbox or help desk, or use workflows to assign conversations based on predefined conditions.

Handoff processes for chat and email are configured separately.

To configure the handoff process:

1. In your HubSpot account, click More, then navigate to Service > Customer Agent. If More doesn't appear in your account, navigate to Service > Customer Agent directly.
2. In the left sidebar menu, click Train > Human handoff.
3. Click the Chat or Email tab, depending on the channel you want to configure.
4. Click Edit handoff process, then select one of the following handoff options:

   Permissions required Seats required To edit ticket assignment routing under Edit handoff process, users must customer agent editor permissions, an assigned seat and Account Access or Super Admin permissions. 

   • 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 customer agent will continue to answer questions.

4. If you choose to hand off the conversation to a human agent, configure your assignment and messaging rules:

• • Seats required only users with an assigned Sales or Service Seat can be included in your routing 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 Ticket assignment dropdown menu and select users or teams.

• • To assign customer agent to tickets or conversations using workflows, select I want to hand off issues to different users or teams based on a set of conditions:
    • Click the For help desk channels, use dropdown menu and select a ticket-based workflow. When selected, customer agent creates a ticket and automatically moves it to help desk.
    • Click the For inbox channels, use dropdown menu and select a conversation-based workflow.

5. Use the text boxes to enter a message to display when your team is available or unavailable.
6. 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.
7. 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.

Please note: handoff messages are automatically translated based on the visitor’s language.

1. In your HubSpot account, click More, then navigate to Service > Customer Agent. If More doesn't appear in your account, navigate to Service > Customer Agent directly.
2. In the left sidebar menu, click Train > Human handoff.
3. Click the Chat or Email tab, depending on the channel you want to configure.
4. Click Edit handoff process. 
5. If you're editing an email channel, toggle the Send a message switch on.
6. Use the text boxes to enter a message to display when your team is available or unavailable. The options shown will depend on the channel and the handoff process you selected.
   
   

Create a handoff workflow using a template

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 automate customer agent handoff.

To use the Reassign Tickets for Customer Agent Handoff template:

1. In your HubSpot account, click More, then navigate to Automation > Workflows. If More doesn't appear in your account, navigate to Automation > Workflows directly.
2. In the upper right, click Create workflow > From template.
3. From the template 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 deploying customer agent to workflows and rule-based chatbots. 

Understand customer agent handoff status

When customer agent triggers a handoff, the Customer Agent ticket status property is automatically updated. You can use this property to understand where tickets are in the handoff lifecycle and identify which tickets require action from your team.

For example, you can create custom help desk views filtered by status, build custom reports to track escalations and handoff volume. 

• Pending: customer agent is actively handling the ticket and no handoff has been triggered. 

• Awaiting Human Assignment: customer agent has triggered a handoff, but no human rep has been assigned yet. This may require manually assigning the ticket. 

• Handed off: customer agent has successfully handed off the ticket and a human rep is now assigned.