Who answers
Every conversation is answered by the assistant or by you. What each side means, how it is set, and how it differs by channel.
Every conversation has exactly one answerer, and the Answering control at the top of a ticket is where it is set. There are two positions:
- Assistant — it replies to the customer by itself. Nothing waits on a person.
- You — you write the replies. The assistant stops answering the customer.
The filled side is the one in force. Pressing the other side switches it, and it can be switched back at any point.
What "You" means on each channel
Both positions mean the same thing everywhere — the customer hears from a person, not the assistant. What differs is whether the assistant keeps working behind you.
| Channel | Assistant | You |
|---|---|---|
| Website chat | Replies in the widget | Assistant goes silent; you type in the widget |
| Help page | Replies in the help page chat | Assistant goes silent; you type in that chat |
| Sends the reply itself | Assistant drafts each reply into your composer; nothing sends until you do | |
| Phone | Answers the call | Not available — the call has ended by the time the ticket is read |
| API | Answers the request | Not available — the caller has had its response |
| WhatsApp, Slack, Telegram | Replies in the channel | Not available yet |
On a live channel the assistant has to go quiet, because the customer is on the page: two answers to one question, seconds apart, is worse than a slower answer.
On email there is no such race. Nothing reaches the customer until somebody presses send, so the assistant keeps writing and its answer is waiting in your composer when you open the ticket. You send it, edit it first, or discard it and write your own.
Drafting is not a third answerer
A drafted reply can look like a state of its own, because the assistant is still producing text. It is not: the draft goes nowhere on its own, so the person deciding what to send is the one answering. That is why a ticket with a draft in it shows You.
How a conversation starts
A conversation opens with the assistant answering, on every channel but one.
Email is the exception. A new email thread opens with the assistant drafting for you, so the first reply your customers get from a new mailbox is one somebody read first. An email answer is read once, by one person, with your name on it, and there is nobody watching a widget for it to keep waiting — so the safe default is the one that costs a few minutes.
Change it per chatbot under Deploy → Email → Review replies before sending. Turn it off and the assistant emails its answers itself.
The setting decides how threads open, not what they stay as
Once somebody has moved a ticket to Assistant or You, that ticket keeps what it was given. The Deploy setting only decides where new threads start.
Taking a conversation over
Open the ticket. The header shows which side is answering, and the line above the composer says where a reply would go — the chat, or an email address.
Press You. On a live channel the assistant stops immediately. On email it keeps drafting for you.
Write and send. On a live channel your reply appears in the widget the customer is already using; on email it goes back down the same thread they wrote in on.
Handing it back
Press Assistant. If the customer is on the page right now you are asked to confirm, because that is the one direction that can leave somebody mid-sentence.
There is also one automatic hand-back. If you hold a live conversation and then close every Helpdesk tab, the conversation returns to the assistant about ninety seconds later and the customer's next message is answered. The alternative is a person typing into a room with nobody in it. Email tickets are never handed back this way — nothing is waiting in real time, so the thread simply stays yours.
Every switch is recorded
Takeovers and hand-backs are written to the ticket's history with who did it and when, which is the first question asked when an assistant says something unexpected after a person was involved.
What the customer sees
Nothing announces the switch, with one exception: when a live conversation is handed back automatically, the customer is told the person has stepped away before the assistant's next answer. A deliberate hand-back is silent, and so is a takeover.