Human handoff: when the AI passes the chat to your team, and how the Inbox works
ZolAi knows when a conversation needs a person. It hands the chat to your team with a short brief, and your team replies from a live Inbox.
A good AI agent knows its limits. Some conversations need a person: an upset customer, a problem with a paid order, or a question your content does not answer. ZolAi is designed to recognize those moments and bring your team in at the right time, without making the customer repeat themselves.
When the agent hands over
The agent passes a conversation to your team when:
The visitor asks for a person a second time.
The visitor complains, or reports a problem with a paid order or a delivery.
The visitor needs something your content cannot answer, and still wants help.
Visitors can also ask for a person directly with the Talk to a person button in the chat window. Either way, the chat moves to your team, and the agent never claims to have handed over when it has not.
The handoff brief
Every time the agent hands over, it writes a short brief for your team: what the visitor wants and why the chat needs a person. The brief is pinned above the conversation in the Inbox, so whoever picks it up understands the situation in seconds. It is internal: the visitor never sees it.
The whole conversation stays in front of them too, so they can read what the visitor and the agent said before writing their first reply.
Once someone on your team takes a chat, the agent stays silent in that conversation, so the AI and your team never talk over each other.
The Inbox
The Inbox is where your team sees conversations as they happen. New messages and status changes appear live, without refreshing the page. From there, a team member can:
Reply to the visitor, who sees the reply in the chat window while still on the page. The first reply takes the chat: it is assigned to the person who replied, and the AI stops answering.
Assign a conversation to a teammate, pick up an unassigned one, or let go of their own.
Set a priority, so urgent chats stand out.
Write internal notes that only the team can see.
Close a conversation when it is done, and reopen it later if needed.
Closing asks for confirmation first, and once a chat is closed, the visitor's next message starts a new conversation. If you reopen a conversation your team was handling, it goes back to the team; otherwise the AI answers in it again.
The list can be filtered by status, assignment and priority, sorted by newest activity or by who has waited longest, and searched by visitor name, email, phone or any message text. A badge in the sidebar counts the open conversations with unread messages, so no waiting visitor slips through.
Who sees what
Not everyone on your team needs to see every conversation. Each workspace starts with three roles, Admin, Support agent and Viewer, and you can build your own. A support agent sees the conversations assigned to them and the unassigned ones they can pick up, while members with full inbox access see everything. These rules are enforced on the server, not just hidden in the interface.
Business hours and away messages
Your team is not online around the clock, and the agent knows it. You can set business hours for each day, holidays, and an away message. Outside those hours, a visitor waiting for a person sees your away message and when the team will be back, in the visitor's own time. The AI is told as well, so it can set the right expectations.
You also choose who answers on each agent:
AI and team: the AI answers and hands over when needed. This is the usual setup.
AI only: there is no handoff; the agent offers to take the visitor's contact details instead.
Team only: every message waits for a person, and the chat window works as a live chat.
Learning from handoffs
Analytics shows how many conversations the AI answered alone and how many were handed over, who started each handoff (the AI, the visitor or a teammate), and how long your team took to send its first reply. If many handoffs are about the same topic, that is often a sign your content is missing an answer. Add it, and the next visitor may not need a person at all.
