Agent Assignment & Human Handoff
While Remo handles the vast majority of client interactions automatically, some situations call for a personal touch. Remo hands these conversations over to a member of your team — without the client having to repeat themselves.
When Does the Bot Hand Off?
The bot will escalate a conversation to a human agent in these situations:
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Client requests a human — if a client says something like "I want to speak with someone" or "connect me to an agent", the bot immediately hands off
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The AI judges a handoff is warranted — frustration, a complaint, or a question the bot isn't equipped to answer well. It escalates rather than risk making the experience worse or inventing an answer
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Contractor or supplier identified — if the incoming contact is a contractor or supplier rather than a prospective client, the conversation is routed accordingly
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A booking request with automatic scheduling turned off — when Meeting scheduling is disabled and a client asks to book, the bot doesn't send a link. It hands the client to an agent instead. See Routes & Capabilities
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Manual assignment — anyone on your team can assign a chat to an agent from the dashboard at any time
What Happens During Handoff
When the bot decides to hand off a conversation:
- The bot sends the client a brief acknowledgment — something like: "I'm connecting you with one of our team members right now. They'll be with you shortly."
- Remo picks the available agent with the fewest assigned clients, so the load spreads across your team instead of piling onto whoever answered last
- That agent is notified by email, push notification and WhatsApp
- The conversation is flagged in the dashboard with an Agent Assigned status
- The bot stops responding in that conversation — the agent has full control until the assignment is removed
If nobody is marked as available, there is no agent to pick, so Remo notifies the project's admins instead. Nothing is silently dropped, but the client is waiting on a human who hasn't been named yet.
The client experience is seamless. They don't need to repeat information, since the agent can see the full conversation history.
If the Agent Doesn't Act
An assignment isn't a dead end. If the assigned agent hasn't acted on the chat within 12 hours (the default), Remo reassigns it to another agent automatically. Clients are never left sitting in a queue behind someone who is on holiday.
Agent Availability and Contact Phone
Two settings that shape all of the above belong to each agent personally, on Communication → Agents:
- Available for new chat assignments — an agent's own toggle. Turning it off stops new clients being routed to them; assignments they already have stay where they are
- My contact phone — the number the bot uses to reach that agent when a client asks for a human. Without it, the WhatsApp notification has nowhere to go
Agents manage their own entries here. See Agents & Team.
If every agent switches themselves off — end of the day, a long weekend — there is nobody for Remo to assign to, and every handoff falls back to notifying admins. It's worth checking the roster on the Agents page before a busy campaign goes out.
Suppressing Handoff for Specific Keywords
Some conversations look like a handoff to the AI but shouldn't be one — a portal enquiry, a known partner, a recurring phrase you'd rather the bot keep handling itself. A keyword rule can override that decision: when the keyword appears, the bot skips the assign-to-agent step and stays in the conversation.
The same mechanism can suppress the contractor handoff and the scheduling link.
AI Categories and Sentiment
The bot continuously reads the emotional tone of each message and uses it to decide whether to escalate. Sentiment is a real per-project capability, and it resolves to one of four values:
| Value | What It Means |
|---|---|
| Interested | The client is engaged and moving forward |
| Neutral | Informational exchange, no strong signal either way |
| Uninterested | The client is disengaging or politely declining |
| Frustrated | Something has gone wrong — the strongest signal to get a human involved |
It also assigns each contact one of your project's AI Categories — for example Hot lead, Information seeker, or Out of scope. Both signals are visible on the contact's profile and help agents prioritize who to contact first.
Re-enabling the Bot After Handoff
Once an agent finishes handling a conversation and the client interaction is resolved, the bot can be re-enabled for that client. This allows automated follow-ups to continue after the agent interaction is complete.
To re-enable: go to Chats, open the conversation, and toggle AI on from the client's settings panel.