When does the AI answer, and when does it hand the conversation to me?
The AI answers on its own until someone asks for a person, gets assigned to a teammate, or the AI itself decides a human should step in.
By default, your AI assistant answers new conversations on its own. It steps back and brings in a human in a few specific situations, and it always tells the customer when it does.
When the AI hands over
- The customer asks for a person. Phrases like "talk to a human", "speak to an agent" or "transfer me" are recognized automatically, and the AI hands over right away rather than trying to talk them out of it.
- The AI itself decides a human is needed. For anything outside what it can confidently handle, it says so honestly, something like "Let me bring in a team member who can help with this," and marks the conversation as needing a human.
- A teammate gets assigned to the conversation. The moment a person is assigned, the AI stops answering that conversation, see How do I give a conversation to someone else?
- You pause or turn it off for that conversation. See How do I take over from the AI in the middle of a chat?
How to spot a conversation that needs you
Conversations waiting on a human show a "Needs human" badge in your list, and you can filter your inbox to just these with the Needs human filter, see How do I filter my inbox, and save the filters I use most? The AI status panel inside an open conversation, opened from the info icon in the header, shows the reason it escalated and when.
If the AI genuinely breaks
On the rare occasion something goes wrong on our side, like a provider outage, rather than leaving the customer with no reply at all, the AI sends a short holding message saying a team member will follow up, and the conversation is handed to a human. This is different from a normal handover: it only happens when something has actually failed, not as part of a routine handoff.
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More in Your inbox
The other guides people read alongside this one.
- How do I read and reply to a conversation?
Open a conversation from your inbox list, type your reply, and send it. Switch to a note if the message is only for your team.
- How do I give a conversation to someone else?
Use the assignee control in the conversation header to hand it to a teammate, take it yourself, or hand it back to the AI.
- How do I snooze, resolve or reopen a conversation?
Resolve when you are done, snooze when you need to come back later, and either way it reopens by itself the moment the customer replies.
- How do I filter my inbox, and save the filters I use most?
Filter by channel, assignee, team or unread, then save the combination as a view you can jump back to in one click.
Did this not cover it?
Start a chat and the assistant will try first. If it cannot help, it hands you to a person.
Or email support@peakifyhub.com. We answer within 1 business day, Mon–Fri.