AI Support and Taking Over a Conversation

When you turn on the AI assistant for a chat widget, it can answer visitors' questions by itself — but your team can step in and take over any conversation at any moment. This page explains how a conversation moves between the AI and a person, how to take over from your Inbox, what the visitor sees when you join, and how to tell AI, teammate, and system messages apart.

Who this is for

Anyone on your team who replies to chat conversations in the Inbox — especially if your chat widget has the AI assistant turned on. If you haven't set up the AI assistant yet, see Chat Widget.

How a support conversation flows

Every chat conversation has a mode that decides who's answering:

Mode	Who's answering	How it starts
AI	The AI assistant replies automatically	Default mode whenever the AI assistant is turned on for the widget
Waiting for a human	The AI has paused and is waiting for your team	The visitor asks for a person, seems frustrated, or the AI can't help — it hands off automatically
Human (live)	A teammate is replying directly	A teammate selects Take over on the conversation

A typical conversation looks like this:

A visitor opens your chat widget and asks a question. If the AI assistant is turned on for that widget, it answers right away using your knowledge base.
If the visitor's question needs a person — they ask to talk to someone, they're frustrated, or the AI genuinely can't help after trying — the AI hands the conversation off. It tells the visitor a human has been notified and will reply in the same chat.
The conversation now shows up as waiting for a human. A teammate opens it from the Inbox and selects Take over.
The teammate replies directly. The visitor sees a short banner letting them know a person has joined, and the AI stays paused for the rest of that conversation.
When the issue is resolved, the teammate selects Resolve to close the conversation, or Return to bot to hand it back to the AI. If the visitor writes again after being resolved, the conversation reopens automatically.

This same conversation is where every message with that visitor lives — email, chat, form submissions, and so on — so nothing about taking over changes where you find the conversation. See Inbox for the general Inbox layout, search, and reply tools.

Finding conversations that need a human

Open Inbox from the left menu. Conversations that involve the AI assistant show a small state badge next to the channel icon in the conversation list:

Waiting — the AI has handed off and a visitor is waiting for a reply. This badge is highlighted so it's easy to spot.
Live — a teammate has already taken over and is handling the conversation directly.

A conversation with neither badge and a chat icon is still being handled by the AI.

Taking over from the Inbox

Open Inbox from the left menu.
Select the conversation you want to handle. Above the message history you'll see a banner describing the current mode:
- "AI assistant is handling this" — the bot is answering.
- "Visitor requested a human" — the AI handed off and no one has joined yet.
- "You're handling this conversation" — you (or a teammate) already took over.
Select Take over in the banner.

Taking over immediately:

Pauses the AI for this conversation — it won't reply again until you hand it back.
Assigns the conversation to you.
Posts a short message the visitor can see, letting them know a person joined (for example, "Alex joined the conversation.").

From here, type your reply in the composer at the bottom just like any other conversation in the Inbox.

Returning a conversation to the bot

If you've taken over but want the AI to resume answering, select Return to bot in the banner. The AI will answer the visitor's next message as normal.

Resolving a conversation

When you're done helping the visitor, select Resolve in the banner. This closes the conversation and archives it. If the same visitor writes in again later, the conversation reopens automatically and starts back in AI mode.

A resolved conversation shows a Resolved state in the banner. If you need to reopen it yourself, select Reopen & take over.

What the visitor sees

Visitors never see the internal mode badges or banners your team sees in the Inbox — they see a simpler, visitor-facing version:

While the AI is answering, or while it's waiting for a human after a handoff, the visitor sees no special banner — they just continue chatting normally, and the AI tells them (in its own reply) that a human has been notified.
Once a teammate takes over, the visitor sees a short banner at the top of the chat widget: the teammate's first name and "is helping you" (for example, "Alex is helping you"), or "A team member is helping you" if no name is available.
The "agent joined" message posted when you take over appears as a normal message in the chat, just like any other reply.

Taking over and returning to the bot both happen instantly for the visitor — they don't need to refresh or reopen the chat widget.

How AI, agent, and system messages are labeled

Inside your Inbox, every outgoing message in a chat conversation is labeled underneath so your team can tell at a glance who sent it:

Label shown	What it means
AI assistant	The message was generated and sent automatically by the AI.
A teammate's name	A teammate sent this message after taking over.
System	An automated notice, such as the "joined the conversation" message posted when someone takes over.
You	Your own reply, shown from your point of view.

These labels appear only in your team's Inbox view — the visitor's own chat widget doesn't split these apart into separate styles; it simply shows the messages in order, plus the "is helping you" banner described above once a human has taken over.

Permissions

Viewing conversations and their mode requires the submissions: read permission.
Taking over, returning a conversation to the bot, and resolving it all require the email: send permission — the same permission needed to reply to a conversation.

If you can't see the Take over button, ask your organization owner to grant you the email: send permission. See Account & Team.

Troubleshooting

The bot isn't handing off even though the visitor asked for a person. Confirm "Allow 'Talk to a human'" is turned on in the widget's AI assistant settings — some widgets have this turned off. See Chat Widget.
I don't see a Take over button. You likely don't have the email: send permission on this organization, or the conversation isn't a chat-widget conversation (the takeover banner only appears for chat conversations, not email or form conversations).
The bot answered again after I took over. Make sure you selected Take over, not just replied — replying without taking over doesn't pause the AI. If you see this happen, take over first, then reply.
The AI isn't responding at all. See Troubleshooting.

Inbox — the general Inbox layout, replying, and organizing conversations.
Chat Widget — setting up your chat widget and its AI assistant.
Support Tickets — where bug reports and follow-up requests from the AI assistant go.
Troubleshooting — fixes for a stuck or misbehaving AI assistant.