Human handoff

Sometimes your visitors need to speak with a human. SiteSpeakAI makes it easy to escalate conversations to your support team when the AI can’t fully help.

How human handoff works

When enabled, visitors can request to speak with a human agent. They’ll be prompted to enter their email address, and your team receives a notification with the conversation details.

Enable escalations

Go to Configuration

In your chatbot dashboard, click Configuration in the sidebar.

Select Settings

Click on Settings.

Go to Escalations tab

Click on the Escalations tab.

Enable Escalations

Toggle on Enable Escalations to allow visitors to escalate to human support.

Email notifications

Get notified via email when a visitor escalates:

Toggle on Enable Email Notifications
Enter your email address(es) in the Escalation Notification Email(s) field
Separate multiple emails with semicolons (;)

Round robin notifications

If you have multiple team members handling support, enable Round Robin Notifications to rotate escalations between email addresses instead of sending to all. Each escalation goes to the next email in the list.

Round robin is great for distributing workload evenly across your support team without overwhelming everyone with notifications.

Slack notifications

Receive escalation notifications directly in your Slack workspace:

Connect Slack

Go to Install Agent → Slack and click Connect to Slack.

Install the app

Authorize SiteSpeakAI to access your Slack workspace.

Invite to a channel

Invite the SiteSpeakAI bot to the channel where you want to receive notifications.

Enable Slack notifications

Back in Settings → Escalations, toggle on Enable Slack Notifications.

You must connect Slack in Deploy & Install before the Slack notification option becomes available.

Webhook notifications

Send escalation data to any URL via a POST request. This is useful for integrating with tools like Zapier, Make, or your own CRM.

Enable webhook notifications

In Settings → Escalations, toggle on Enable Webhook Notifications.

Enter your webhook URL

Paste the URL where you want to receive escalation data.

Add a signing secret (optional)

Enter a secret to sign webhook payloads with HMAC-SHA256 for verification. The signature is sent in the X-Signature-256 header.

Webhook payload

When a visitor escalates, SiteSpeakAI sends a POST request with a JSON body:

{
  "event": "escalation.created",
  "title": "My Chatbot: Visitor needs human assistance",
  "text": "I need to speak with someone",
  "chatbot": {
    "id": "chatbot-uuid",
    "name": "My Chatbot"
  },
  "visitor": {
    "id": 123,
    "email": "visitor@example.com",
    "first_name": "Jane",
    "last_name": "Doe",
    "phone": "+1234567890"
  },
  "conversation": {
    "id": 456,
    "last_message": "I need to speak with someone"
  },
  "inbox_url": "https://app.sitespeak.ai/chatbots/{id}/inbox/{visitor_id}",
  "timestamp": "2026-02-09T12:00:00+00:00"
}

Verifying webhook signatures

If you set a signing secret, each request includes an X-Signature-256 header. To verify the request is from SiteSpeakAI, compute the HMAC-SHA256 of the raw request body using your secret and compare it to the header value:

const crypto = require("crypto")

function verifySignature(payload, secret, signature) {
  const expected =
    "sha256=" + crypto.createHmac("sha256", secret).update(payload).digest("hex")
  return crypto.timingSafeEqual(
    Buffer.from(expected),
    Buffer.from(signature)
  )
}

Webhook notifications work independently of email and Slack notifications. You can enable any combination of the three.

How visitors escalate

Once enabled, visitors can escalate to human support by:

Asking to speak with a human: The AI recognizes requests like “Can I talk to a person?” or “I need human help”
The AI offering escalation: When the AI can’t confidently answer, it can offer to connect the visitor with a human
A rule in your Instructions: If your Instructions say that certain situations should go to your team (for example bugs, outages, login problems, complaints or refund requests), the AI escalates those messages without waiting for the visitor to ask for a person

When a visitor escalates, they’ll be prompted to enter their email address so your team can follow up.

Instruction-driven escalation only works while Enable Escalations is on. With it off, the AI answers those messages as normal and never opens the escalation form on its own.

Responding via Live Chat

When you receive an escalation notification, you can respond to visitors in real-time through the Inbox (Conversation History).

Open the Inbox

Click Inbox in the dashboard sidebar to see all conversations.

Select the conversation

Find the escalated conversation and click on it to open.

Start Live Chat

Type your message in the input field and send. This automatically starts a Live Chat session.

End Live Chat

When finished, click the End Live Chat button in the conversation header. This returns control to the AI assistant.

While Live Chat is active, the AI assistant will not respond to messages. This ensures the visitor only communicates with your support team until you end the session.

Email replies to visitors

Visitors often leave the chat before your team replies. With email replies on, your Inbox reply also goes to the visitor’s email address, and their answer comes back to the same conversation in your Inbox.

Email replies are available on the Pro plan and higher.

Go to Settings

In your chatbot dashboard, click Configuration, then Settings.

Turn on email replies

On the Basic tab, toggle on Email Replies To Visitors and save.

How it works

You reply to a visitor in the Inbox.
If the visitor does not answer in the chat within 5 minutes, SiteSpeakAI emails your reply to them. If you send more than one message, they go out together in one email.
The visitor answers the email. Their answer shows in the same conversation in your Inbox, with a mail icon.
You reply in the Inbox as usual. Later emails stay in the same email thread.

The email shows your chatbot’s name and your first name. It does not show SiteSpeakAI branding. If you are an agency with white-label branding, the email shows your agency logo, and it comes from your verified sending address if you set one.

When a reply is not emailed

A mail icon next to the send button in the Inbox shows if your reply can go by email. Hover over it to see why when it cannot. A reply is not emailed when:

The visitor has no email address, or the address is not valid
An earlier email to the visitor bounced or was marked as spam
The conversation came from WhatsApp or Google Chat, where the visitor gets your reply in that app

If an email bounces or is marked as spam, the Inbox shows a note under the reply box. Click Email again to turn email replies back on for that visitor.

SiteSpeakAI removes the quoted history from the visitor’s email answer, so you only see their new text. Attachments are not shown. The Inbox notes how many the visitor sent.

Customizing escalation messages

You can customize the messages shown to visitors during escalation in the Localization tab under Settings, including:

The message shown when escalating
Email input placeholder text
Confirmation messages

Best practices

Set expectations: Let visitors know typical response times in your escalation confirmation message
Use round robin: Distribute escalations evenly across your team
Connect Slack: Get real-time notifications where your team already communicates
Use webhooks: Connect escalations to your CRM or ticketing system via Zapier, Make, or a custom endpoint
Review escalations: Regularly review why visitors escalate to improve your AI’s training

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Advanced

How human handoff works

Enable escalations

Email notifications

Round robin notifications

Slack notifications

Webhook notifications

Webhook payload

Verifying webhook signatures

How visitors escalate

Responding via Live Chat

Email replies to visitors

How it works

When a reply is not emailed

Customizing escalation messages

Best practices

Ready to automate your customer service with AI?

​How human handoff works

​Enable escalations

​Email notifications

​Round robin notifications

​Slack notifications

​Webhook notifications

​Webhook payload

​Verifying webhook signatures

​How visitors escalate

​Responding via Live Chat

​Email replies to visitors

​How it works

​When a reply is not emailed

​Customizing escalation messages

​Best practices

Ready to automate your customer service with AI?

How human handoff works

Enable escalations

Email notifications

Round robin notifications

Slack notifications

Webhook notifications

Webhook payload

Verifying webhook signatures

How visitors escalate

Responding via Live Chat

Email replies to visitors

How it works

When a reply is not emailed

Customizing escalation messages

Best practices