The conversation lifecycle
Every conversation is in exactly one of four states. Knowing which is which explains most of what you see in the Support inbox.
The four states
| State | Meaning |
|---|---|
| AI | The chatbot is answering. Every conversation starts here. |
| Waiting | The visitor asked for a human and is queued for an operator. |
| Live | An operator has accepted and is chatting with the visitor. |
| Closed | The conversation is finished and marked done in reporting. |
From Live there are two ways out. Close returns the visitor to the chatbot, which is what you want when the human question is answered but the visitor may keep browsing. Resolve ends the conversation entirely and records it as done. This is the one that reads as completed in your resolution metrics.
What triggers a transition
- Visitor asks for a human
- Either by tapping the live chat control or by saying so in conversation. The chatbot recognises the intent and offers the handoff.
- The visitor appears stuck
- Several messages inside the frustration window trigger a proactive offer of a human. Tunable per chatbot. See Behaviour and timing.
- An operator reaches out
- An operator watching a live AI conversation can send a connect request. The visitor accepts or declines; nothing is forced on them.
- An operator takes over
- An operator can take an AI conversation directly without waiting for the visitor to ask.
- Timeouts
- A queued visitor who waits past the queue timeout is offered the offline form instead. A silent participant is treated as disconnected after the configured window.
What gets recorded
- Every message, tagged with who sent it. Visitor, chatbot, operator or system.
- An append-only audit log of state changes: handoff requested, accepted, transferred, closed, resolved.
- The visitor rating, when post-chat rating is enabled.
- The page journey: what the visitor saw before, during and after the conversation.
- Any contact details captured, plus the qualification score at the time.
How far back you can look. Your plan sets a chat-history window that governs how far back the dashboard shows conversations, from one week on Free to a year on the top tiers. It is a visibility window, not an automatic deletion schedule; for deletion see Data and privacy.
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