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When Ari can’t or shouldn’t help, it hands the thread to your team.

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What triggers a handoff

  • The customer asks for a human, or to escalate
  • The customer is frustrated or angry
  • The request is about sales, billing, a security issue, or an incident
  • Ari’s search finds no relevant knowledge, or its draft doesn’t pass its own quality check. This is the only handoff that records a knowledge gap
  • A customer @-mentions a user on a Slack thread, unless you turn that off
  • Ari has nothing new to add, e.g. the customer repeats an answered question. It leaves an internal note and records no knowledge gap
  • Anything you’ve told Ari to handoff via Custom Instructions
Vendor sales pitches are the exception: no reply, Ari unassigns itself.

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What happens mechanically

Ari genuinely transfers ownership. It sends a short handoff message to the customer (you can turn this off in preferences), unassigns itself, and never continues helping after handing off. Security issues and incidents are also set to Urgent. If the handoff moves the thread to needs first response, the SLA clock restarts from the customer’s last message. Ari’s handoff message doesn’t count as a reply.

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Clarifying questions

If a question is ambiguous and your docs answer it differently depending on the detail, Ari asks one clarifying question instead of handing off. It never re-asks something the customer has already said.

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When a customer tags a user

Some customers @-mention a named contact on every Slack message out of habit, so Ari never gets to answer. To keep Ari working on those threads, turn off Hand off when a teammate is tagged on the Ari → Preferences page. The other handoff triggers still apply.

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Customizing the handoff

The handoff message is written by Ari each time; there’s no template to edit. To shape it, use Custom Instructions to set expectations (“the team replies within 2 hours”), have Ari collect details your team needs, or force specific topics to always go to a human.

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Continue work after handoff

Use the Ari unassigned workflow trigger to start a workflow when Ari handsoff, for example:
  1. Have the workflow post to Slack so that you know about the handoff
  2. Kick off a Sidekick investigation
  3. Automatically assign someone else from the team
Use this Workflow Template to get started.