The hand-over is the heart of the design
Most of the value of an AI receptionist is not in what it answers. It is in what it refuses to answer. A receptionist that knows exactly when to stop is one you can trust with your number, because the worst it can do is pass a chat to you a little early.
So the hand-over rules are decided before anything else, in the first session, and they are written as a short list you can read in a minute.
The signals that trigger a hand-over
The list differs a little for a shop, a clinic and a trading company, but it is built from the same signals.
- The customer asks for a person. Any form of "I want to talk to someone", "owner", "manager", "agent", in Arabic, or in a second language depending on the package. This always wins.
- A complaint or an angry tone. Words like "wrong", "late", "broken", "refund", "complaint", or a message that is clearly upset. The receptionist does not argue or apologise at length. It hands over.
- Money outside the approved list. A price the receptionist does not have, a discount request, a payment plan, a request for an invoice or a quotation. It can send your fixed price list; it never negotiates.
- Quantity or deadline. "I need 200 pieces" or "before Thursday". These are real deals and deserve a human reply.
- A sensitive topic. Health, legal and financial questions. A clinic's receptionist takes the request for an appointment and passes it on; it never comments on symptoms.
- No approved answer. The question is simply not in its list. It says so, politely, and collects the details.
- Repeated confusion. If the customer rephrases twice and the receptionist is still unsure, it stops guessing.
You can add signals of your own: a product line you want to sell personally, or a word like "wholesale".
What happens at the moment of hand-over
The sequence is the same every time, and it is designed so the customer never repeats their story.
- The receptionist collects what you will need: name, what they want, quantity, when, where, and any photo they sent.
- The customer gets one message: a person will reply, with the time window you set, for example "within the hour during working hours, or in the morning".
- You get the full chat and a short summary on your phone: who, what, how urgent.
- The receptionist stops replying in that chat until you step in.
If the customer sends another message while waiting, the receptionist does not restart from "hello". It confirms that a person has been notified and keeps the new message in the summary.
What the owner sees
A good morning looks like this: five chats handled completely, three handed over. Each of the three has the details ready, so the owner replies once, with a decision, instead of opening with a question. Owners who have lived with a full inbox will recognise how much time that is.
Depending on the package, the receptionist also sends a weekly report: how many chats it handled, how many it handed over and why. That report is how you decide which new answers to approve, and it usually shrinks the hand-over list month by month.
Setting the rules for your business
In the first session we go through three questions:
| Question | Why it matters |
|---|---|
| Which requests do you want to handle personally? | These become always-hand-over signals |
| Which answers may it give on its own? | Hours, locations, delivery, catalogue, the common questions |
| What is your reply time promise? | The customer is told this at hand-over |
A clinic will put every symptom question in the first row. A trading company will put every quantity above a threshold there. A shop may let the receptionist answer every product question and hand over every order and complaint. The rules are yours, and they can change next week.
The packages, and which includes the weekly report and a second language, are on the services page. Our article on whether a receptionist annoys customers covers the other side: what it should answer, and how.
The one rule we do not remove
Whatever list you choose, one signal stays: the customer asking for a person always reaches a person. A receptionist that blocks that is a wall, not an employee, and customers feel the difference in a single message.
If you want to see which of your own chats from last week would have been handed over, message us on WhatsApp and describe them in a few lines.