Question handling
Designing the handover so it never turns into a maze
Every other decision in configuring an assistant is downstream of this one. How readily it offers a person determines whether the widget is experienced as help or as an obstacle, and the difference between those two is almost entirely a matter of how the handover is designed rather than how good the answers are.
What they are really asking
They have decided this channel cannot solve their problem, and they want to know the shortest path to somebody who can.
- can i speak to a human
- i want to talk to someone
- agent
- is anyone actually there
- this isn't helping
- give me a phone number
- can someone call me back
- i need to talk to a real person
- how do i contact support
- let me speak to your manager
The material that answers it
An assistant is only as good as the document behind it, and for this question the document usually exists but is written in the wrong shape. What each one has to contain to be answerable:
| The contact routes you will actually honour, with hours | A number that is answered, an address that is read, a form somebody works from. Listing a route nobody watches is worse than listing fewer routes, because the person will use it and then wait. |
|---|---|
| What happens after somebody sends an enquiry | Who receives it, when they look, and what the first reply usually is. This is the most reassuring paragraph you can publish and hardly anybody publishes it, because it is obvious from the inside. |
| A response time you can meet, including out of hours | Different numbers for weekdays, evenings and weekends if that is the truth. One honest slow number outperforms an optimistic fast one, because the second is measured against and the first is planned around. |
| The address enquiries are sent to, and who watches it | Configuration rather than content, and the thing most likely to be set once and forgotten. An enquiry route pointing at a mailbox nobody opens is the quiet failure underneath most complaints about a chat widget. |
| What you want people to include | An order reference, the address on the account, and the question in one line. Publishing the list lets the assistant prompt for it, which is the difference between a reply that resolves and a reply that asks for details. |
How to handle it
Offer the person before they have to demand one
The instinct is to make the handover a last resort in order to protect the deflection rate. It backfires: somebody who has to ask three times arrives at the human already annoyed, and the conversation starts from a worse place than if they had been offered one immediately.
A good rule is to offer after the second unsuccessful exchange, and immediately for anything in the escalation set of whatever intent they are in. Nobody has ever resented being offered a person too early.
Recognise the request itself rather than leaving it to retrieval
This product handles the request directly. A small set of conversational messages, including greetings, thanks and somebody asking for a person, are recognised without going near the knowledge base, so the offer appears consistently and does not depend on your material happening to contain a page about contacting support.
That consistency is the property that matters. A handover that works because a contact page ranked well is a handover that stops working when the contact page is reworded.
Collect three things, not a form
The form takes a name, an email and a message, and that is deliberately small. A long form at the moment somebody has given up on self service is another obstacle, and the abandonment rate on it is the whole handover leaking away.
The assistant can do the work instead: prompt for the reference or the account address inside the conversation, so the message field arrives with the context in it and the form stays short.
Set a reply expectation you can actually meet
Say when somebody will be in touch, in the same message as the confirmation, and pick a number your team hits on a bad day rather than a good one. A promise of a couple of hours that becomes tomorrow generates a second contact and a worse mood.
The enquiry is emailed to the address you nominate and stored as well, so a failed send does not silently lose it. That matters most here, because this is the message where somebody has already decided the channel is not working.
When it stops being an answer
The request that arrives straight after a refusal
When the assistant has just declined to answer, the offer of a person should be in the same reply. A refusal followed by silence is the exact shape people describe when they say a chat widget was useless, and it is entirely avoidable in the wording of the fallback message.
Out of hours, when nobody is going to reply tonight
Honesty outperforms optimism. Say that the team is back in the morning and that the message is waiting for them. Somebody told plainly will wait. Somebody left to assume will send four more messages and open with that in the morning.
The person who will not use the form
Some people want a number and nothing else, and repeatedly offering a form to them is the maze in its purest form. If you have a number, the assistant should give it. If you do not, it should say so plainly rather than steering, because being steered is the thing they are objecting to.
How this one goes wrong
The maze
Somebody types agent. The assistant offers a help article. They type I want to speak to a human. It suggests searching the knowledge base. They type this a third time, in capitals. Every individual reply was an attempt to be helpful and the aggregate is a company that will not let a customer reach it.
The cost is not one conversation, it is the reputation of the channel: a customer who has been through the maze once will not use the widget again, including for the questions it answers perfectly well. Configure the handover to be offered early and honoured immediately, and the same assistant becomes the fastest route to a person rather than the obstacle in front of one.
The same question, trade by trade
The pattern above holds everywhere. The wording, the escalation line and the material behind it do not, so there is a page per trade.
- For a dental clinicA described toothache is not a support question. Spotting it mid sentence and getting the patient onto the phone.
- For a medical practiceAt a practice the handover is a routing decision between three numbers, and the assistant is not the thing that routes.
- For a veterinary clinicA suspected poisoning and an owner asking about putting a pet to sleep. Both need a person fast, for opposite reasons.
- For a physiotherapy clinicHow long will this take, will it heal, do I need a scan. The physio handover is about a prediction, not an emergency.
- For a opticianFlashes, floaters and a shadow across the sight need the practice today. Getting out of the way quickly and clearly.
- For a pharmacyAdvice on a medicine is a regulated act. Recognising the moment and moving the person to the counter, without drama.
- For a law firmPrivilege does not attach to a widget and a wrong steer can cost a claim. The trigger is anybody describing their own legal situation.
- For a accounting firmA general question stops being general the moment somebody supplies their own facts. The trigger, the wording, and the deadline to capture.
- For a insurance brokerA claim or an incident is the one handover that cannot wait for an email. Why the claims line belongs inside the refusal message itself.
- For a mortgage brokerAffordability is assessed lender by lender, and a figure from a widget gets repeated to an estate agent. The trigger and the wording.
- For a estate agencyThe moment an address appears, the answer belongs to a valuer. Handover here is a routing problem across four audiences and one widget.
- For a recruitment agencyTwo audiences, two inboxes and one confidentiality wall between them. The handover starts by working out which side of the desk is typing.
- For a marketing agencyHere the handover is the product. A brief arriving in the chat is the signal, and a discovery call is what the assistant is trying to produce.
- For a online storeMost handovers on a shop are one thing: an order nobody can look up. Collect the two identifiers and the reply comes back complete.
- For a fashion retailerPast the window, tag removed, worn once. These are judgement calls a shop makes, and an assistant answering them decides them wrongly.
- For a furniture retailerA reporting window started when the crew drove away. The handover has to collect photographs and a delivery date, fast.
- For a electronics retailerThe value of this handover is the transcript. Model, serial, symptom and what was ruled out, so nobody starts from zero.
- For a garden centreThe visitor has usually already found the chewed leaves. The reply's first job is a vet's number, not a care sheet or a form.
- For a bike shopThe first line of the reply is an instruction to stop riding. The handover comes second, because a soft brake will not wait for email.
- For a restaurantA callback form suits a private hire enquiry. For an allergy before tonight's service it does not, and the wording must lead with the phone.
- For a hotelA named reservation is invisible here. Say so, take the details, and let the front desk look up what only they can see.
- For a holiday rentalNo hot water at ten at night is not a documents question. The first reply needs a phone number, not a page from the welcome guide.
- For a gymI want to cancel is not a question. Give the notice period, then take a name and message so the membership team sees it the same day.
- For a salon or spaA suitability question is not a policy lookup. Stop, say why, and put the client in front of a therapist before anything is booked.
- For a universityWellbeing, visas and anything about an individual application. Three triggers that must be rules rather than judgements on a university site.
- For a private schoolAny question about an individual child stops the assistant dead. Here is the trigger, the wording, and why it is a rule rather than a judgement.
- For a driving schoolLearners ask whether they are ready to book a test. That is a judgement only the instructor who has watched them drive can make.
- For a online courseSomebody who paid and cannot get in is the most urgent conversation on a course site. Route it in one step.
- For a plumbing and heating firmA live leak or a carbon monoxide worry cannot wait for an email to be opened. Here the handover is a number in the first line.
- For a electrical contractorOne electrical message makes a careful, balanced answer the wrong answer. It needs four instructions and a phone number.
- For a removals companyOnce somebody says the move went wrong, every clarifying question reads as resistance. Agree first, take the details, stop there.
- For a car dealershipA reservation holds a vehicle and usually takes a payment. That belongs to a person, and the assistant's only job is speed.
- For a SaaS companyOn a subscription site the handover line is account visibility. What to collect in the message field, and why a second vague reply costs you.
- For a developer tools companyA developer handover succeeds or fails on what the form carries. The four details to gather in chat before taking a name and an email.
- For a fintech appSomebody watching money leave an account cannot wait on an email reply. Putting the number in the refusal text rather than composing it.
- For a healthtech appPatients, clinicians and buyers need three different destinations. How one question sorts them without the assistant claiming to know who is typing.
Questions
- Does offering a person early undermine the point of the assistant?
- No, because the questions it answers well are ones nobody wanted to escalate anyway. The people asking for a person have a reason, and delaying them converts a solvable problem into a complaint about the widget.
- What does the handover actually do?
- It offers a short form taking a name, an email and a message. That is emailed to the address you nominate and stored as well, so nothing is lost if the email fails to send. It does not open a ticket in another system.
- Can it transfer somebody to a live agent?
- No. There is no live chat behind it. It takes a message and gets it to the address you choose, which is why setting an honest reply time matters more here than anywhere else.
- Where should the handover be offered most aggressively?
- Anything with a deadline, a safety consequence or an unhappy customer attached: deletion requests, complaints, allergens, accessibility adjustments and account recovery. In those intents the handover is the correct outcome rather than the fallback.
Keep reading
- Handling complaintsThe job is to route, not to resolve. Acknowledge without conceding, name the escalation route, and get it to a person fast.
- Handling service outagesThe assistant knows nothing about an incident unless your material says so. A status page it can read is the fix, and reassurance is the trap.
- Handling age and eligibilityState the rule, never apply it to the person typing. Age limits, membership, residency and licence conditions, and where the handover sits.
- Every question typeHandling patterns for the questions every support inbox gets.
Try it on your own material
Upload a document or point it at your site, paste one line of HTML, then ask it something only your business could answer.