Live chat and hand-off tickets
Let an agent take over a widget conversation in real time, and send hand-offs to any of the 8 supported help desks.
When TR-AI hands a conversation over, it creates a ticket for your team with the transcript. With live chat on, the visitor does not have to wait for an email: during your live chat hours the conversation stays open in the widget and your agent’s replies on the ticket appear there as they are written.
Hand-off tickets in every help desk
| Help desk | What TR-AI creates |
|---|---|
| Zendesk | Ticket with the transcript as a private first comment, tagged tr_ai_chat / tr_ai_voice / tr_ai_message |
| Freshdesk | Ticket with source Chat or Phone, tagged the same way |
| Intercom | Conversation from the customer’s contact (found by email or phone, created if needed) |
| HubSpot | Ticket in the first open pipeline stage, with a note and linked contact |
| Salesforce | Case with the supplied name, email and phone; origin Chat or Phone |
| Zoho Desk | Ticket in your first department with the customer as contact |
| ServiceNow | Incident; the caller is linked when a user has that email |
| Jira Service Management | Customer request raised on behalf of the customer’s email |
Every hand-off ticket is marked (a text marker, a tag where the desk has tags, and a record in TR-AI), so TR-AI never tries to answer its own hand-offs.
Turning on live chat
- 1Open the widget settingsDashboard → Chat Widget → “Live chat with your team”, and switch it on.
- 2Set your hoursPick your time zone, days and start/end times. Overnight ranges such as 22:00–06:00 work. Outside these hours hand-offs become normal tickets answered by email.
- 3Set the maximum waitHow long a visitor waits for the first agent reply (30 seconds to 30 minutes, default 3 minutes), and the message shown if nobody replies in time.
- 4Reply as usualAgents need nothing new — they reply on the ticket. The visitor sees “Sam from Support joined” and then the reply; what the visitor types next is added to the same ticket.
- Only public agent replies are relayed; internal notes never reach the widget.
- If no agent replies within the maximum wait, the visitor is told the team will reply by email and the chat closes politely.
- A conversation with no activity for 30 minutes ends automatically, even if the visitor closed the tab.
- Live chat uses no AI calls.
- Set live chat hours to when agents actually watch the queue — a short, honest window beats a long one with missed chats.
- Make the “no reply in time” message specific: “We’ll email you within 2 hours at the address you gave.”
- In Zendesk or Freshdesk, create a view filtered on the tr_ai_chat tag so live chats stand out from email tickets.
- Ask visitors for their email before hand-off (widget setting) so the email fallback always has somewhere to go.
Will the AI reply on the hand-off ticket too?
No. Hand-off tickets are marked and skipped by every TR-AI webhook and poller.
What happens if the help desk is down when a hand-off happens?
For phone calls, the transcript is emailed to the account owner instead. For chats, the transcript is emailed to your hand-off address with Reply-To set to the visitor, so you can answer straight from your inbox.