An AI receptionist that knows when to hand off to a human

What is human handoff in an AI receptionist?

Human handoff is the moment an AI receptionist stops handling a conversation itself and passes it to a person on the business's team. It happens because the customer asks for a human, because the conversation reaches a situation the AI shouldn't handle alone (an angry caller, a billing or legal question, an emergency), or because a rule the business set has matched. In Frontivo.io a handoff is either a live call transfer with a short brief for the person picking up, or a detailed message with an instant alert, and for chats and texts the team can take over directly from the inbox.

How human handoff works in Frontivo.io

1. 1

   Choose which situations should reach a person: the customer asks for someone, sounds angry, asks about billing or legal matters, or describes an emergency. Add your own custom rules in plain words for anything specific to your business.

2. 2

   Add your team's mobile number, plus the people who take calls (up to 3 on Starter and Phone Only, 10 on Growth) with what they handle (billing, emergencies...) and when they take calls, in the order to try them. Choose how you want to be alerted for messages: by email, text message or desktop notification.

3. 3

   During a call or conversation, the AI keeps answering from your knowledge base until the customer asks for a person or one of your rules matches.

4. 4

   During opening hours the AI tells the caller it is connecting them and transfers the call live to the right person: whoever handles that topic first, then the next person, then your team's number. The person picking up hears a short spoken brief (a whisper) in your language with the caller's name and what they need, and sees the caller's own number, then presses any key to take the call. If nobody picks up, the caller can leave a voicemail. Setup takes about 2 minutes: see live call transfer.

5. 5

   After hours nobody is woken up for routine calls: the AI takes a message and promises a callback. Real emergencies are still put through on the days you choose, or every call if you turn that on. Anyone describing a danger to life is first told to call the local emergency number.

6. 6

   On plans without phone answering (the chat, text, social and email single-channel plans), the AI takes a detailed message instead: the customer's name, contact details, what they need and how urgent it is.

7. 7

   Your team gets an instant alert by email, text message or desktop notification, with the summary and a link to the full conversation in the inbox.

8. 8

   For website chats, texts, WhatsApp, Instagram, Messenger and email, anyone on your team can open the conversation in the inbox, take over and reply, then hand it back to the AI when done.

9. 9

   Every handoff is saved with the full transcript and a short AI summary, so whoever follows up knows exactly what was said.