Let visitors talk to a person

Visitors can ask for a person from the chat widget, and your AI agent can ask for one too. Every request lands in Inbox for your team to pick up.

Turn on the button#

1. Open Deployments and select the deployment.
2. Go to the Chat widget tab → Features.
3. Turn on Talk to a person and select Save changes.

The widget adds a headset button (Talk to a person) at the end of the composer. It becomes clickable after the visitor's first message.

What the visitor sees#

While a request waits, the visitor can select Keep chatting with the AI to cancel it. They can keep typing the whole time, and their messages stay in the same conversation.

The request reaches Inbox whether or not anyone is available.

Requests from the AI agent#

An AI agent can also request a person if you give it the Request Operator tool, directly or inside a Skill. These arrive as AI-agent requests and don't depend on the visitor button. A Skill is the better home, because it can also tell the agent when to ask. See Teach repeatable behavior with Skills.

Mark yourself available#

Your availability decides what visitors are told and who gets an alert. It doesn't assign requests to you.

1. In the sidebar, open the Operator card. It reads Offline or Available.
2. In Operator availability, turn on Available for conversations. This turns on both Visitor requests and AI-agent requests.
3. Under Offer a person when…, turn off the kind of request you don't answer. With one off, the card reads Available · 1/2.

When at least one member is available for that kind of request, the visitor sees "Connecting you to a person…". You stay available while the dashboard tab is open, even in the background, and drop out automatically when you close it.

Answer the request#

Requests appear in Inbox as Operator requested, and the Dashboard counts them under Needs attention → Operator requests.

While you're available, a new request of a kind you have on also:

• plays a short sound;
• shows a browser notification. Select it to open the conversation in Inbox;
• puts the number of waiting requests in the tab title, such as "(2) Inbox".

The browser asks to allow notifications when you turn on Available for conversations. If you blocked them, allow notifications for help.ai in your browser's site settings.

Open a request and select Accept request. See Take over a conversation in Inbox.