Chatbot Human Handoff: Build and Test the Whole Workflow
By Steven Van ·
Quickchat's tutorial builds a Human Handoff setup with rules, hours and a reply test, and flags two checks that failed: handback and outside-hours.
Quickchat has published a tutorial for building a full chatbot human handoff workflow in Quickchat. The walkthrough uses a fictional desk-lamp shop, Cedar Desk, and an Agent called Cedar Support. It ends with a human reply appearing in the shopper's own chat.
What the setup covers
The guide treats handoff as a transfer that keeps the customer's messages while the AI pauses. A complete setup also lets a person reply in the same chat and gives a control for returning the conversation to the AI. Quickchat separates three outcomes: a transfer, a delivered reply and a resolved customer issue.
- Agent and knowledge: three custom Knowledge Base articles (delivery and returns, lamp troubleshooting, support availability) and a Main Prompt. The Agent can explain a 30-day returns period but cannot approve a refund.
- Handoff rules: under Actions & MCPs, Human Handoff gets two rules. One covers refund decisions or exceptions to the returns policy, and the other covers a lamp that still fails after the power checks. A question about what the policy says should not trigger a transfer.
- Availability: a Europe/London schedule, Monday to Friday, 09:00 to 17:00, with a message for outside hours and AI summary turned on. Topic-based routing and Email notifications stay off.
- Delivering the reply: the conversation reaches the Unassigned queue in the Inbox, and the operator's reply shows up in the shopper's chat.
Test results Quickchat reports
In Quickchat's local build, the staffed handoff and the delivered human reply passed. Two extended checks did not. After handback, the conversation reverted to the human queue following one AI reply. The outside-hours response promised a later human reply without creating a handoff. The guide says the recipe does not create a refund, callback or after-hours ticket.
Requirements and kit
The exercise needs a Quickchat account and a separate learning Agent. Two browser windows play the dashboard and the visitor, so no website installation, order database or second teammate is needed. Preview replies and Simulation Testing use AI credits. Human Handoff is available on the Free plan for personal learning, while business use requires a commercial plan.
A downloadable Cedar Desk kit includes the three knowledge articles, the Main Prompt, exact settings, a testing dataset, evaluation criteria and a manual acceptance worksheet. These are editable setup files, not a one-click import.