Human handoff and WhatsApp

An AI that never escalates is a liability. Storebird hands a conversation to you when the customer needs a person — and lets you answer without sitting in the dashboard.

Human handoff is included on every paid plan: Essential, Pro and Scale. See Plans, limits and stores.

What is not included on Essential: the lead capture form, and the email channel. Both start on Pro.

When a handoff happens

Your AI passes a conversation to a human when the customer asks for one, when the request is something the AI cannot do (cancel an order, make an exception, negotiate), or when it does not have a trustworthy answer.

Handing over honestly is better than answering badly. If you see the AI escalating things it should know, that is a knowledge gap — see Train your AI.

Answering from the dashboard

Open the conversation in your Inbox and click Take Over. The customer is told a person joined. When you are finished you can return the conversation to the AI.

If the visitor left an email address, they also get a message letting them know a person has picked up the conversation — so they do not sit waiting on a page they already closed.

Answering from WhatsApp

You can be notified on WhatsApp and reply straight from your phone. Your reply lands in the customer's chat on your store; their answer comes back to your WhatsApp. You never open the dashboard.

Set this up under WhatsApp in settings:

1. Add and verify your WhatsApp number
2. Choose the Notification types you want
3. With more than one store, set Per-website numbers so the right person gets the right shop

Verification is a one-time code to prove the number is yours.

Choosing your notification types

Under Notifications and the WhatsApp settings you control what reaches you. Turn on the things that need a human now — handoff requests, captured leads — and leave the rest to your weekly review.

Notifications you ignore train you to ignore notifications. Fewer is better.

Out of hours

If a handoff happens when you are closed, your AI can set a realistic expectation instead of promising an instant reply. See Business hours.

Mobile app

Storebird has a native mobile app, so you can read and answer conversations from your phone without WhatsApp in the middle. It is free to download and you sign in with the same Storebird account you use for the dashboard.

• Download on the App Store (iPhone and iPad)
• Get it on Google Play (Android)

What the app does:

• Push the moment a customer asks for a person. You get a "New chat request" notification with the visitor's name.
• The whole conversation, not a snippet. Read everything the AI already answered before you type.
• Reply from anywhere. Sending photos and files from the app is coming in the next update.
• Take over, resolve, or hand the chat back to the AI with one tap.

The app follows the same notification setting as the dashboard (off / only when you are needed / everything), so turning something off in one place turns it off in both. See Notifications.