Live chat in the IrisAgent inbox works with the IrisAgent website chat widget. If your team works in another tool, you can route live chats there instead: Salesforce, Zendesk Messaging, Intercom, or Freshchat.
How it works
- A visitor chats with your AI agent on your website.
- The visitor asks for a person, or the AI decides to escalate. The conversation appears in the Waiting queue in Conversations. The bot keeps answering while the visitor waits, and the visitor sees “Connecting you to a support agent…”.
- A teammate clicks Join chat. The bot pauses, and the visitor sees that they are chatting with that teammate.
- The teammate and visitor chat in real time.
- The teammate clicks End chat & return to bot. The visitor is told the agent has left and that the assistant can help with anything else.
Turn on live chat
You need to be an IrisAgent admin.- Go to Deploy → Chat channels.
- On the Website Chatbot card, click Manage and open the chatbot configuration you use on your website.
- Open the Handoff tab.
- Under Method, choose Start a live chat.
- Under Live chat destination, choose IrisAgent inbox (your team replies from Conversations).
- Optionally turn on Automatically escalate when no answer is found to send visitors to your team whenever the AI has no answer.
- Save the configuration.
When chats are escalated
A chat moves to the Waiting queue when:- The visitor asks for a person. Clear requests such as “talk to a human” trigger your chatbot’s Agent handoff procedure. New chatbots include this procedure by default, and you can edit what it says and what information it collects first.
- A procedure escalates. Any procedure can hand off at the right step, for example after collecting an order number. See Workflows.
- The AI has no answer, if you turned on Automatically escalate when no answer is found.
Answer a live chat
The bar above the composer always shows who is handling the chat:Join and reply
- Open the Waiting queue in Conversations and select the chat.
- Read the conversation so far, including what the bot already answered and any Captured details.
- Click Join chat. The conversation is assigned to you and set to In progress.
- Type in the Chat tab and press Enter. Your message appears in the visitor’s chat window within a few seconds.
Step in before the visitor asks
You don’t have to wait for an escalation. Click Take over from bot on any website chat to pause the AI and reply yourself, for example when you spot a frustrated customer or a high-value account.Take over from a teammate
If a teammate owns a chat, click Take over to move it to you. The conversation is reassigned to you. Only the teammate who owns a live chat can end it, so take it over first if you need to end it for them.End the chat
When you’re done, click End chat & return to bot. The AI answers any further questions from the visitor. Click Mark resolved to close out the conversation. Resolving a conversation also ends any open live chat.What the visitor sees
- While waiting: “Connecting you to a support agent…”. The AI keeps answering in the meantime.
- After a teammate joins: “You’re chatting with <name>.”
- After the chat ends: “The agent has left the chat. Our assistant can help with anything else.”
Good to know
- Live chat replies are text only.
- There are no agent availability settings or business hours yet. Waiting chats stay in the queue until a teammate joins or resolves them, and the bot keeps helping the visitor in the meantime. If your team is not always online, consider asking for an email address in your handoff procedure so you can follow up by email.
- Conversations answered by a teammate are not counted as AI resolutions.
- Website chats close automatically 4 days after they start. The visitor can still read the transcript and can start a new chat with the reset icon.