AI · 4 min read · Savina Bansal
A good AI agent knows when to say “let me get a human”
Handing a WhatsApp chat to a person is not the AI failing. It is the AI doing its most important job. Why the hand-off deserves more design than the answers.
Building the platform this article is about
Most AI agent demos show the agent answering everything. The ones worth deploying are judged on something else: what they do at the edge of what they know.
A customer forgives “let me get someone from the team”. They do not forgive a confident wrong answer about a refund, a price or a medicine. One of those costs a few minutes of a person’s time. The other costs the customer.
Three moments to hand over
When the customer asks. Someone who types “agent”, “human” or “talk to someone” has told you what they want. In Ohanvi that request always reaches a person; it is not a setting you can turn off.
When the agent is unsure. Every reply is scored on how well your knowledge matches the question. Below the minimum you choose, the agent does not answer; the customer gets your hand-off line and the chat moves to the Team Inbox.
When the answer is not written down. The agent is instructed never to invent prices, stock or policies. A discount request, a complaint, a custom order: if your knowledge does not cover it, a person should.
A hand-off is only as good as what comes with it
The worst hand-off makes the customer start again. In Ohanvi the person who picks up sees the whole conversation and the reply the agent would have sent, as a suggestion they can use, edit or ignore. The customer does not repeat themselves.
Write the hand-off line yourself, and make it honest about timing: “Someone from the shop will reply in the morning” is better than a promise of “right away” at midnight.
Tune it with real chats
Start cautious: a high confidence minimum, so more chats come to your team. Read a week of replies. Where the agent handed over something it could have answered, add the missing knowledge. Where it answered something it should not have, rate the reply low and teach it the better one. Then lower the minimum a step.
The aim is not zero hand-offs. It is hand-offs only where a person adds something.
Keep reading
Questions this answers
- When should a WhatsApp AI agent hand over to a person?
- When the customer asks for a person, when the agent is not confident its knowledge answers the question, and when the answer is not written down — prices, discounts, complaints and custom requests in particular.
