A customer with a leaking boiler and a newborn in the house types into the chat at 4pm, and gets three helpful paragraphs about annual servicing. Nobody on the team sees it until the next morning. The instruction behind that conversation said "transfer to a human if needed", and the word "needed" was left for the assistant to interpret.
Good chatbot handover rules are not complicated, but they are specific. They say which topics go to a person, which emotions do, which enquiries are worth a person's time, and what happens at 9pm when nobody is at a desk.
This post walks through writing those rules and setting the on-duty hours that make live takeover realistic.
The four triggers worth writing down
Almost every sensible handover falls under one of these.
- Topic. Some subjects should always involve a person: complaints about a completed job, anything involving a refund or dispute, clinical or legal specifics, safety issues, and requests your content cannot cover.
- Emotion. A visitor who is upset, anxious or frustrated needs a human response faster than a correct one. Signs include complaints, strong language, and the same question asked twice.
- Value. A large job, a commercial contract or a repeat customer with a big order may be worth a person's attention even when the assistant could handle it.
- A direct request. When someone types "can I speak to a person", that is the rule. Arguing with it loses more goodwill than it saves time.
The mistake is writing only the fourth. Visitors who are anxious or have a high-value job often do not ask for a person. They just leave.
A rules table you can adapt
Here is an example for a small heating and plumbing firm. Swap the rows for your own trade.
| Trigger | Example | During on-duty hours | Outside on-duty hours |
|---|---|---|---|
| Safety topic | Smell of gas, water near electrics | Give the emergency number from your content first, then hand over | Give the emergency number, take details, flag as urgent |
| Complaint about past work | "The radiator you fitted is leaking" | Hand over to a person | Apologise, take details and job reference, open a ticket |
| Upset visitor | Repeated frustration, strong language | Hand over to a person | Acknowledge, take details, promise a reply time you can meet |
| High value | Full heating system, commercial premises | Answer basics, then offer a person | Capture full details as a lead |
| Direct request | "Can I talk to someone?" | Hand over | Say when the team is back, take details |
| Price negotiation | "Can you do it cheaper?" | Offer a person | Take details for a callback by email |
| Routine question | Prices, areas, availability | Assistant answers | Assistant answers |
Two things to notice. Safety topics start with the emergency number, not a handover, because no website chat should stand between someone and emergency help. And every row has an out-of-hours column.
What a good handover looks like
The moment of handover matters as much as the rule. The visitor should know what is happening and should not have to repeat themselves.
Visitor: I had a boiler service last week and now the heating won't come on at all. This is the second time. Assistant: I'm sorry, that's frustrating, especially after a recent visit. I'm bringing in someone from the team now so they can look at your booking. Could you give me your name and postcode so they have it ready? Visitor: Sarah Hill, YO24. Assistant: Thanks, Sarah. A team member will join this chat shortly.
The assistant acknowledged the problem, did not try to troubleshoot a repeat fault, collected what the person will need, and said what happens next. When the team member takes over from the inbox, the whole conversation is already there.
Setting on-duty hours honestly
Live takeover only works if someone is actually watching. In SpideyChat, a team member marked as on duty can take over a conversation from the inbox. Outside those times, there is nobody to hand to, and the rules need to say so.
The honest way to set on-duty hours is to mark only the times when someone will genuinely respond within a few minutes. Not your opening hours. Not "whenever the office manager checks her phone". If the only person watching is also running the front desk, that is a short window, and it is fine to say so.
A small business might end up with something like 9am to 12pm and 2pm to 5pm on weekdays, leaving lunch and evenings to the assistant. That is better than claiming 9 to 5 and missing half the handovers. Our post on on-duty hours as live backup covers staffing these windows.
Outside on-duty hours, the handover becomes a capture: details taken, a ticket opened where the topic warrants it, and a clear statement of when someone will reply.
Writing your own rules in an afternoon
- Pull twenty recent enquiries from email or chat and mark the ones where you would have wanted a person involved from the start.
- Sort them into topic, emotion, value or direct request. Some will fit two.
- Write one line per rule in the form "When X, do Y". Keep the language concrete.
- Add the out-of-hours version of every line.
- Decide your real on-duty hours and who covers them.
- Add the rules to the assistant's instructions and switch on the transfer to a human action.
- Test each rule by typing a message that should trigger it, during and outside on-duty hours.
For the specific case of upset customers, handling angry customers in chat has more example wording.
Keep adjusting after launch
Rules are guesses until real visitors test them. Once a month, read ten conversations that were handed over and ten that were not but probably should have been. You are looking for two patterns: handovers that fired on trivial questions, wasting a person's time, and conversations where someone clearly needed help and did not get it.
Change one or two rules at a time. Then check again next month.
Start today by writing the out-of-hours column for your three most common complaint types, because that is the gap most businesses leave open. The features page lists how the handover and takeover actions fit together, and how AI employees hand over to humans covers the wider design.