The handover feature turns your chatbot into a smart filter — visitors first explore the bot for common answers, and only those with more complex questions reach you as an agent. This way you receive only the high-intent conversations that actually need a human reply.
💡 Plan availability: Handover is available in the SOLO, PLUS, and EXPERT packages. (Legacy: STANDARD, PRO)
We've split this article into six sections:
How handover works in practice
First you hide the text field of the chat box, then add specific buttons in the chatbot that bring the text field back when a visitor clicks them — that's how they can reach you. At the same moment, you receive a notification in the dashboard letting you know a customer is waiting to talk.
This nudges visitors to explore the chatbot first. By the time they reach you, they typically have a relevant question about your products or services — exactly the kind of conversation that can turn into a sale.
Step 1 — Disable the chat text field
Open the chatbot garage, create a new chatbot, or open an existing one. If you're not sure how to build a chatbot, check our guide first.
With the chatbot open, click Settings.
Open the Behavior tab and tick Disable the chat box text field. Don't forget to save your changes.
💡 Tip: We recommend setting the chatbot to trigger either when the visitor clicks the live chat button or 1 second after the visitor lands on the page. In the When tab, choose after the visitor enters the website (set the delay to 1 second) or after the visitor clicks the chat box button. This prevents the text field from being visible before the chatbot loads.
You can add additional conditions — show the chatbot only on a specific page, for a specific audience, etc. Learn more in our chatbot conditions guide.
Step 2 — Add the handover button
Now configure the handover button itself. We recommend first building all the branches and answers where you want to keep the visitor inside the chatbot. You can take inspiration from our universal e-commerce template.
💡 Tip: Create FAQ-style branches for common topics — shipping, payment, discounts, seasonal offers — or a shopping assistant that helps visitors find the right product.
Once your branches are ready, add the handover button. Pick a branch you want to end with the option to talk to an agent, click the last message in that branch, choose Add response, and select Connect with agent.
Name the button — for example: 💬 I'd like some advice. Then write the reply the visitor will see after clicking it. Something like:
We'd be glad to chat with you right here and sort out anything you need. Hang on for a moment 😉 — we'll be right with you. In the meantime, feel free to write what we can help with.
Repeat for every other branch where you want to offer handover. In your chatbot tree, handover branches are marked with a pink icon.
To verify the result, click Preview and click through the chatbot yourself.
⚠️ Warning: Once the visitor chooses handover, the chatbot disappears — they can't go back to its earlier branches.
Forward conversations to email
Instead of handing over to a live agent, you can forward every handover conversation to a specific email address — your agents' inbox or a ticketing system. You can configure this for both online and offline chat box states.
Setup steps:
Open the Automation tab and select or create a chatbot that includes a handover button.
For each state, choose Forward conversation to email and enter one email address.
For each state, you can also write a short message shown to the visitor.
Save and publish the chatbot.
Conversations for the selected chat box state will now land in your inbox. Open Conversation details to see the full transcript. The conversation becomes available 2 minutes after the visitor ends the session. After the email is sent, the visitor can start a new conversation and repeat this up to 3 times per hour. You can reply directly from your email client.
Here's what it looks like from the visitor's side:
💡 Note: Email handover does not support automatic tag assignment.
💡 Note: Groups are not added to a conversation if only email handover is active.
Tips for working with multiple chatbots
💡 Behavior with multiple chatbots:
• If you use chatbots with the text field disabled (DTF), other automations (chatbots and automatic messages) still trigger.
• If you have multiple DTA chatbots with different delays, all of them trigger when the visitor clicks the chat box.
• If one chatbot has an active text field (ATF) and another has DTF, the text field state depends on which chatbot the visitor clicked (DTF chatbot — text field stays disabled; ATF chatbot — text field activates).
💡 Tips for multi-bot setups:
• Let DTF chatbots run first, then add conditions for chatbots with the text field allowed.
• Target DTF chatbots to specific subpages.
• Use routing between chatbots to simplify the flow.
• Make sure the delay between individual chatbots is high enough.
What's next?
Chatbot — complete overview of how chatbots work and how to build one.
Chatbot conditions — control when, where, and to whom the bot appears.
Chatbot conversation — how chatbot conversations differ from normal ones and how they're billed.
Chatbot insights — measure how visitors interact with your flows.
Routing between chatbots — chain multiple chatbots together.
Welcome message and handover — guide visitors smoothly from the chatbot to a live agent.
💡 Need more help? Reach out to our support team — we'll be happy to help!