Live Chat

Aimdoc's live chat handover feature lets your sales reps take over the chat from the AI agent. There are several ways to configure these flows depending on how hands-on you'd like to be with the visitor experience.

Escalation Buttons

You can configure escalation buttons that allow visitors to proactively trigger escalations. When a visitor clicks an escalation button, your team will receive notifications through email and/or Slack.

To set up escalation buttons, see the Escalation Buttons section in the Customizations guide.

With Zapier on the Engage plan, you can configure Zaps to forward notification events wherever you'd like.

On the Convert plan, you can configure webhooks to build custom event-driven automations for all notification types.

Let your AI agent intelligently decide when to escalate conversations to a sales rep based on criteria you define.

Setup

  • Navigate to the agent you want to configure
  • Click Edit Agent to open the Agent Builder
  • Go to the Skills tab and enable Skills
  • Create or edit a skill, then grant it the Escalate to a human tool
  • Define when the skill activates and instruct the agent when to escalate
  • Configure the skill's rep pool and assignment method

See Skills for the complete setup, including conditional escalation skills and CRM account-owner routing.

How It Works

When an active skill's instructions tell the AI to escalate, Aimdoc checks the eligible reps' availability and routes the conversation according to that skill. The notification contains a link to the escalated session.

  • Click the link in the notification to go directly to the live session view
  • Type a reply and click Send to take over and message the visitor (or Stop AI & send if the agent is mid-reply)
  • Or click Steer AI to guide the agent without taking over — see Guiding the AI
  • If you leave the session disconnected, Aimdoc hands control back to the AI after about 5 minutes

If your last connection to the session closes and you do not reconnect, Aimdoc hands the conversation back to the AI after about 5 minutes.

Assign Escalations

Each escalation skill can use one of two assignment methods:

  • Notify everyone — eligible reps are notified and the first rep to take over owns the conversation.
  • Round-robin — Aimdoc assigns conversations across an ordered rep pool, skipping teammates who are outside their working hours.

You can also route matched CRM accounts to their account owner, notify the owner as an FYI while assigning another rep, or include the owner's name as context without notifying them. Different skills can use different pools and routing rules.

See Route human escalations for setup and fallback behavior.

Notification Requirements

For Notify everyone, reps must have escalation notifications enabled in their account settings to receive escalation emails. A directly assigned rep receives the assignment email even if that preference is off. Escalation notifications can also be sent to any Slack channel based on that channel's configuration; directed assignments mention the selected rep.

Slack Live Chat Takeover

When Slack Live Chat Takeover is enabled for a channel, escalations post as an interactive card instead of a plain notification. Reps can reply in the Slack thread to message the visitor, use Take Over / Hand Back to AI, or open View Session in Aimdoc.

Setup, the note: internal-reply convention, idle handback, and limitations are covered in the Slack integration guide.

Working Hours (Availability)

Working Hours let you control when teammates are considered available for live chat escalations.

How it works

  • If a rep enables Working Hours, Aimdoc will only treat them as available during their configured schedule (in their selected time zone).
  • If Working Hours is disabled, the rep is treated as available 24/7.
  • If no reps are available right now, Aimdoc won’t page anyone. The AI will continue the conversation and collect contact info for follow-up during business hours (or offer meeting booking if you have it configured).

Setup

  1. Each rep opens User Settings -> Working Hours.
  2. Toggle Enable Working Hours and select a time zone.
  3. Configure the weekly schedule.
  4. Make sure Escalation Notification is enabled under User Settings -> Notification Preferences.

Admins can also set working hours for teammates under User Settings -> Organization Settings (Team management).

Live View (Visitors)

Open Visitors from the main navigation to monitor who is on your site or in your app in real time (available on eligible plans).

Filter the Live View by:

  • Status — onsite, in-app, web session, app session, or offline
  • Last seen / first seen — today, last 7 days, or last 30 days
  • Identity — contact, identified, or anonymous
  • Session history — whether the visitor has prior conversation history
  • Rep — filter to visitors associated with specific teammates

Sort by last seen, first seen, or conversation count. Open a visitor to review identity context and load browsing activity on demand (page views and clicks) without pulling activity for every row in the list.

In-app statuses reflect App Mode presence on the Activate plan. Website statuses cover the public widget experience.

Managing Sessions

In the Sessions tab (list view), you can monitor all active and past conversations.

What you can see:

  • Session owner (AI or specific rep)
  • The last rep to take over any given chat
  • Session status and history
  • Source — Website, App, Email, or AI Gateway
  • Started By — Visitor, AI (including proactive outreach), Rep, SDK, or AI Agent (Agent Gateway)

Filter by Source to list only Email or AI Gateway conversations. Email threads show the subject as the conversation name. See Email, Proactive, and Agent Gateway.

Open a session to chat. While the AI owns the conversation, the composer can either steer the agent or take over and send your message to the visitor. Once you own the chat, Send goes to the visitor and Hand back to AI returns control. Taking over while the agent is mid-reply stops that reply and claims the conversation immediately.

You cannot take over a chat if it is already owned by another rep. Only the owning rep can hand the conversation back to the AI.

Session Moderation

Session moderation watches live chat conversations for visitors who attack or probe the agent instead of asking about your product. Flagged sessions are reviewed before anything happens to the visitor.

Enable it

Organization admins configure this under User Settings -> Organization Details -> Session moderation:

  1. Turn on Moderate sessions.
  2. Optionally turn on Alert the team so Aimdoc can send a Session Flagged alert when a review finds bad faith.

New organizations start with moderation on. Organizations that existed before the feature shipped stay off until an admin turns it on.

What happens when a visitor is flagged

After review:

  • Bad faith — the visitor is blocked from chat for 24 hours.
  • Unclear — the session stays flagged for your team; the visitor is not blocked.
  • Good faith — the flag is dismissed.

Signed-in users and conversations a teammate has already taken over are never blocked automatically.

In the Sessions list

  • Flagged sessions show a Flagged badge
  • Filter with Moderation → Flagged
  • Open a session to see the Moderation panel (status, verdict, and what happened). Use Clear flag to dismiss a flag, or Unban Visitor to lift an active block

Guiding the AI

While the AI owns a website or in-app conversation, you can steer it from the session view without taking over. The visitor never sees your guidance; the agent follows it in its next reply.

How to steer

  1. Open the conversation from Sessions or an escalation link.
  2. With the AI still in control, type guidance in the composer (for example, what to emphasize or ask next).
  3. Click Steer AI or press Enter.

If the agent is already replying, the steer queues and applies right after that reply. If the visitor is offline or has closed the chat, steering still wakes the agent; an offline visitor sees the reply when they return.

To message the visitor as yourself instead, click Send (or Stop AI & send if the agent is mid-reply). That takes over the chat and pauses the AI until you hand back. On steerable channels, ⌘/Ctrl+Enter also takes over and sends.

When steering is available

  • Website and in-app conversations, while the AI owns the chat
  • Not available for email or Agent Gateway conversations — sending there takes over
  • Not available while a rep owns the conversation — hand back to the AI first
  • Attachments go to the visitor, so remove them before steering (or use Send to take over and deliver them)

Steers appear in the dashboard transcript as operator notes attributed to you. They are hidden from the visitor.

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