Switch it on
Handoff on the agent has both switches. For phone calls, Transfer calls to a person needs a transfer number before it can be switched on, and is on once you save one. For chat and email, A person in chat & email is off until you turn it on. Without the one for a channel there is no way to reach a person at all, so the agent says plainly that it cannot put anyone on and offers to take a message instead.
Turn each on once you know who is behind it: who takes a transferred call, and who watches the dashboard for flagged chats. Both are real commitments, and handoff without either is a promise you will break in front of a customer.
On the phone: a live transfer
Under Handoff, type the number into Transfer calls to a person and save it, then check the switch beside it is on: a live transfer needs both. The switch turns transfers off without losing the number. When the caller asks, the agent transfers them live — a real handoff, not a callback promise. The number must be answered by a person, and it must not be a line that forwards back into Wiredesk, or you will hand the caller straight back to the agent.
Business hours do not apply here. Phone transfers are offered at any hour the switch is on, so if nobody answers the transfer number overnight, switch Transfer calls to a person off at night or point the number at somebody who is on call.
A mobile is fine. A desk phone somebody actually sits at is fine. A voicemail box is not — the caller asked for a person and would rather have had an honest message taken.
In chat and email: somebody takes over
There is no transfer to make, so the conversation is flagged instead and shows up for your team. Whoever opens it writes the next reply themselves, and the agent stops replying the moment they join. The customer's widget picks up your team's replies as they arrive, so from their side the conversation simply continues.
Hand it back when you are done and the agent resumes. A conversation the customer reopens later always comes back to the agent first, so nobody has to remember to hand it back.
Watch Conversations
Flagged conversations are the ones asking for you.
Open and reply
Your reply joins the thread and silences the agent for that conversation.
Hand it back
The agent picks up again. Replies record who wrote them, so the history reads as a team.
Help while you reply
The top of the reply box sums the conversation up for whoever takes it over: what the customer wants, what the agent already tried or looked up, and the contact details it collected. It is written when the customer asks for a person, so it is waiting when you open the conversation.
Draft reply writes an answer from the agent's knowledge and instructions and lists the sources it used; anything the knowledge does not cover comes back in [square brackets] for you to fill in. Saved replies inserts an answer your team wrote once, with the customer's name filled in. When the customer writes in another language, their messages can be translated into yours, and your reply into theirs. All of it lands in the box for you to edit — nothing is sent until you press Send.
Saved replies and the language your team works in are under Settings › Saved replies & translation.
Outside business hours
A person in chat & email can be limited to your business hours, set just below it under Handoff. They apply to chat and email only; phone transfers ignore them. Outside the hours the agent takes a structured message instead of promising a person who is not there. Messages show under Needs you in the Inbox and on the dashboard, on the conversation and on the contact page, and the owner is emailed about each one by default — or texted, under Settings → Notifications — rather than finding it tomorrow.
If a request goes unanswered for too long, it times out and the agent says so rather than leaving the customer waiting on a person who never came. That is the honest outcome, and it is better than silence — but it is a signal to look at who is watching the queue.