Recipe: Two-Team Handover Routing by Description
To route AI handoffs to two different customer service teams — billing issues to one, technical issues to the other — pick the AI picks card on the handover Delivery tab (stored as by_description) and give each team a description. The model reads each team’s description to choose the destination; the Handover instructions field steers that choice further but does not replace the descriptions. This recipe gives the exact copy-paste values for a Billing Team + Tech Support Team split, including the prerequisites the AI gathers before handing off and the outside-hours behavior.
If you only have one destination team, use Graceful handover to a team instead — it uses the simpler Fixed team card.
What you’ll end up with
- Handover on, mode
by_description(the AI picks card), routing between Billing Team and Tech Support Team. - Two prerequisites: the built-in contact Email (always required) and an order/invoice ID (only when relevant).
- Outside-hours email follow-up enabled.
Before you start
- A stack with at least one specialist configured — this recipe pairs with Recipe: A Billing + Tech Support Stack.
- Two teams created: Billing Team and Tech Support Team, each with at least one member, Opening Hours configured, and — load-bearing here — a description filled in. A team with no description is never considered, and the Delivery tab warns you when some or all of your teams are missing one.
- A conversation custom field for the order/invoice ID. The field picker’s only built-in conversation field is Subject; the built-in contact fields are Email and Phone. Anything else has to be a custom field.
Configure handover
- Open Settings → Agent Stacks → [stack] → Handover → Triggers → toggle Allow handover to humans on.
- Switch to the Delivery sub-tab:
Select the AI picks card under Choose where conversations get handed off
Handover instructions (optional): “Route refund approvals over $500 and subscription disputes to the Billing Team. Route hardware failures, data loss, and unresolved technical issues to the Tech Support Team.”
Check opening hours before handing over: on
Offer email follow-up: on; Offer to close and reach out later: off. These two are nested under the hours checkbox and are the only outside-hours options.
Ask the customer to confirm before handing over: off. It sits outside the hours block and applies to every handover, in hours or out. - Switch to the Prerequisites sub-tab. Add one requirement at a time with Add requirement:
Information to collect: the built-in Email field, in the Contact (CRM) group — When does this apply? Always required — How should the AI ask? “Ask for the email address on the customer’s account.”
Information to collect: your order/invoice-ID conversation custom field — When does this apply? Only when… “the conversation is about a specific transaction” — How should the AI ask? “Ask which order or invoice number this is about.”
The How should the AI ask? text is never sent to the customer — write it as an instruction to the AI. The customer-facing question is generated from the field’s name, in the customer’s own language, so name the field well. The built-in Email field stores the value as a contact address and only counts as collected once a well-formed address is on the contact; order and invoice IDs need a conversation or custom field. 4. Click Save on the Delivery sub-tab. (Prerequisites save one at a time, from inside their own panel.)
Verify it worked
- The Delivery tab has the AI picks card selected, with your routing instructions below it and no “teams without descriptions” warning showing.
- In a real conversation — the web chat widget, say — send “I need a refund for my last invoice” and signal it’s over $500. The AI should ask for the account email and invoice number first, then hand off to the Billing Team.
- A technical handoff (e.g. a hardware failure) routes to the Tech Support Team instead.
Don’t try this from the Testing tab. A test run skips the whole handover step — the team list isn’t even loaded in test mode, and the prerequisite gate, the deferrals and the commit all no-op — so nothing you configured here is exercised there.
Troubleshooting
- Symptom: The AI hands off too aggressively even on simple questions. Fix: review the Handover instructions (optional) — make sure they’re scoped to genuinely complex cases, not catch-all phrases like “anything technical.”
- Symptom: Handoffs go to the wrong team. Fix: the model routes on the team descriptions first, so fix those before the instructions — name the issue types explicitly (refunds, disputes, hardware failures) rather than broad labels like “billing stuff.”
- Symptom: The AI says it can’t reach a teammate and keeps helping instead of transferring. Fix: a team with a blank description is never offered to the model, so it can’t name one that resolves — and rather than commit a handover to nobody, the stack keeps the AI engaged and logs the routing failure. Fill in both teams’ descriptions.