Take and give back a Front Desk hand-off

A hand-off is the Front Desk saying "a person should answer this". The conversation waits for your team, the Front Desk stays quiet, and exactly one person takes it.

Before you start

• You need Reply to customers in the inbox and to be a member of the team the conversation belongs to. Owners, managers and holders of See every team's conversations can take any hand-off.

When the Front Desk hands over

It hands over when the customer asks for a person, when it cannot answer from your information, on a complaint, when two of your sources give different prices, when it must first know who the customer is, when something fails, or when the day's limits are reached. The customer gets one message that a member of the team will answer here.

Steps

1. Look for the hand-off: the bell shows A customer waits for a person under Needs you, and the conversation shows Who answers: waiting for a person with the badge A hand-off is waiting.
2. Open the conversation from the bell, the Inbox or Inbox → Front desk (filter Needs you).
3. Take it: select Take over in the Inbox, or Take it on the team case. Sending a reply also takes it. Who answers changes to you.
4. Answer the customer.
5. When the customer no longer needs a person, select Return to the assistant. The Front Desk answers this customer again from their next message.

Good to know

• Only one person gets it. If two people take the same hand-off at once, one of them wins and the other sees Another person took this conversation first. Reload to see who has it.
• Nothing is sent over a person. A reply the Front Desk had prepared before the take-over is never sent. If the conversation changed hands while you were writing, Kluvan asks you to reload before you reply (fd_owner_changed).
• The person stays in charge. The conversation stays with the team even if the customer's chat or your session ends. Closing a conversation or a team case does not give it back; only Return to the assistant does.
• Not your team? A hand-off of another team answers fd_not_in_queue.
• Outcome. The conversation shows the outcome once it is known, for example Taken by the team, Booking confirmed or The customer went quiet (no answer from the customer for a day after yours, then closed after three more days; a new message opens it again).
• Waiting too long. The owner gets an alert when a handed-over customer waits longer than the minutes set in Front desk settings. See take over a WhatsApp conversation.
• Related: assign and hand over, work team cases.