It is 1:40 in the afternoon. A customer has been talking to your agent about a billing dispute, and now says, “I want to speak to a real person.” Your agent is ready to hand over. What happens in the next thirty seconds was decided weeks ago, on a settings page, by whoever filled in the hand-over list. On a good day that was somebody who thought about lunch.
We have written about why a hand-over matters. This one is about filling in the form.
Step one: when should it hand over?
You choose the triggers. They include: the caller asks for a person, they are upset or complaining, they need something the agent cannot do, or they are qualified and ready. You can add a rule of your own in plain words, and set a number of upset turns.
Be careful with “qualified and ready”. On a busy campaign, it can ring your sales team far more often than they can pick up. Start with the caller asking and the agent being unable, watch for a week, then add more.
Step two: who, in what order?
The list is a set of steps per agent or team. Each step is one of these, with its own ring time:
- A phone number, which suits a branch or an owner's mobile.
- A teammate by name, which suits a key-account manager.
- Whoever is free, from the pool. Skills can narrow it.
- A desk, which is a group with its own routing and hours.
Most floors do best with a desk first, a person second and a fallback number last. To be rung as whoever is free or as part of a desk, your staff need the Workspace, and they must have a verified mobile before hand-overs ring them. A list with nobody Available still rings out, so a list is only as good as your staff's status discipline.
Step three: how long should it ring?
The caller is holding a live line the whole time, listening to hold music. Long ring times across four steps can keep someone waiting for a very long while. Add up your whole chain and ask whether you would wait that long. Then cut it.
With a queue, the caller waits with hold music and hears their place in line, and the first person free takes whoever has waited longest. Past the time limit, the next step on your list runs.
Step four: warm or blind?
In a warm hand-over the person hears who is calling and why, privately, while the caller is on hold, and then joins the same call. Use this unless you have a reason not to. It is what stops a customer from having to explain everything again. Blind steps back at once, which suits a short routine pass such as to a named account manager who already knows the customer.
Your person also sees the offer on their Workspace, with why the AI is handing over and what has been said so far. A call card can be texted to the person who answers, with who is calling, why and their last calls. Decide too whether the recording is announced again when the person joins.
Step five: what if nobody answers?
This is the step people skip, and it is the one the customer remembers. You have three choices: the AI offers a callback, takes a message for the team, or keeps helping. Write the on-hold wording as well, as a workspace default in Settings, Hand-over, or per agent.
Whichever you pick, make sure someone reads what it creates. A missed hand-over goes on a callback list and shows in Analytics. A callback list nobody opens is a broken promise with a timestamp on it, so give it an owner.
Test it with a real phone
Make a test call and ask for a person. Have your colleague in another room pick up. Does the brief make sense? Does the wait feel long? Then have nobody pick up and hear what the caller hears. Every hand-over rings a real person's phone, so warn them first.
What it costs
- A person's minutes on a handed-over call, and the caller's wait on hold for your team, are charged at the staff-call rate. The AI's minutes stay at the voice rate.
- A hand-over that rings someone's mobile is a second phone call, billed per minute while they are on it.
- Each minute a person on the call is transcribed live is charged where your plan prices it.
Figures are on the pricing page. Every plan can hand over to one number. Several people, teammates, desks, the private brief and the call card need a plan that includes hand-over, as the same page shows.
A note for when you have no list
An agent with nowhere to hand over tells the caller to ring 112 in an emergency. Coverage is shown on the Compliance page on plans that include it. Even a single fallback number is better than nothing, so give every live agent a way out. The set-up guide goes through every screen.