Scenarios and handoff rules
Scenarios decide when the AI on your website widget stops answering and does something else: hands the visitor to your team, sends a canned reply, or switches agent. They live in the widget editor's Availability step under When the AI does something else. Human-only widgets show Reaching your team instead.
The triggers
Each scenario card has a trigger and an action. The built-in cards are:
Card | On by default | When it runs |
|---|---|---|
Asks for a person | Yes | The visitor asks for a human, a rep, support, or "someone", or clicks the Talk to a person button. |
Outside policy rules | Yes | The AI marks a question out of scope, or a policy tells it to decline. |
Frustration | No | The visitor repeats themselves or the wording turns frustrated. |
Reports a problem | No | A damaged, wrong or missing order, a billing dispute, or a complaint. A hand-off files the conversation at high priority. |
Asks about their account or order | Yes | The visitor asks about their own order or account. |
Low confidence | Yes | The AI's confidence in its own answer drops below the chosen Sensitivity: Low, Medium (default) or High. |
Click Add a scenario for your own. A custom scenario has an internal Name and a Trigger: Topic match (up to 20 topics, matched as whole words or phrases) or Welcome option (a starter-prompt choice). You can add up to 10 custom scenarios.
When more than one scenario could apply, the editor explains the order: a picked welcome option wins, then a topic match, then frustration, then a reported problem, then outside-policy, then low confidence. Asking for a person is always visitor-initiated. A visitor who asks for a person gets the human path instead of an answer, ahead of every trigger except a picked welcome option.
The Asks for a person card also controls the "Talk to a person" button (Pinned, Subtle, Hidden), Collect contact details (Contact form or Ask in chat), a Wait-time note, and Offer a meeting.
The account-or-order card adds When a connected system has the record: look it up for verified visitors (default), for anyone with an identifier, or never. When no system has the record, or the visitor isn't verified, the card's action runs.
The three actions
Every card has What to do:
Hand off: the conversation goes to Help Desk (the default) or Inbox + email copy. Assign to is Auto (follow the Help Desk routing rules), a team, or a person. Ask for different details lets this scenario collect its own contact fields.
Canned reply: a Message of up to 1,000 characters, Then either Keep chatting or End conversation.
Switch agent: pick the agent under Switch to and write an optional Intro line.
The Default behavior card holds the setup new scenarios start from.
Human availability and business hours
Human availability sets how the widget presents your team:
Offline form: visitors leave a message for follow-up.
Live humans: present the team as available now.
Auto: follow business hours and operator presence. Each teammate's presence is set in their account settings under Help Desk availability (Automatic marks you Available whenever you open the app; Manual only changes only when you set it).
Under Business hours, switch on Office hours; outside them the scenarios' away branches take over. Take messages after hours is on by default; with it off, the widget keeps answering after hours but never offers to take a message. Write an Away note. The widget follows your organization's hours and time zone from Knowledge › Business unless you turn on Override hours for this widget and set a Timezone and Open hours per day.
After-hours branches
Each hand-off scenario has a When you're away setting: Same as default or Different. With Different you get two sub-branches:
After hours, but someone's still on: it is outside office hours, but a teammate is online.
Nobody's available: no one is on, in or out of hours.
A hand-off's main action runs only when office hours are open and someone is available. Canned reply and Switch agent don't wait on a person, so they run as set unless that card picks Different and sets its own away branches.
If nobody responds
Turn on If nobody responds to keep looking for a person when the first assignee misses the chat:
Response window: 1 to 30 minutes (default 2).
Max transfers: 1 to 5 (default 3). Each retry skips whoever missed it.
If everyone missed it: Email the team (default) or a Canned reply. A canned reply has its own Then: Keep chatting or End conversation.
When the first transfer happens, the visitor sees "Still finding someone for you — hang tight."
Lead capture
Under What to ask visitors, Ask for contact details has four modes:
Only on hand-off (default): ask only when a person is getting involved.
After the first answer: a light ask once the visitor got value.
Only when away: ask after hours so the team can follow up.
Before chat: require details up front. Highest friction.
Choose the Name field style and the Details to collect: Name and Email are always required; Phone, Company, Order number, Account number and custom fields are optional. Contact form copy sets the form title, description, submit label and confirmation messages. Send contacts to your CRM pushes captured contacts to HubSpot or ActiveCampaign when connected.