WhatsApp and artificial intelligence
Handoff to a human
A handoff to a human is passing a conversation from the AI assistant to a member of staff, because the person asks for it or because the matter needs a decision. Done well, it reaches a specific phone with the context and, if nobody answers, moves up to the person in charge.
Also known asescalation · human handover · transfer to an agent · talk to a person
How it is used in a residence
There are two doors. One is opened by the person writing: "I want to talk to a person", "human". The other is opened by the content: an exception to the house rules, a matter of money, health or conduct, something an AI assistant should not decide. In both cases the failure is the same: the handoff exists on paper but reaches nobody, because it goes to an inbox nobody checks or to a group where everyone waits for someone else.
What makes it work is the org chart and the shift: which role each matter goes to and who is on duty at that time. And what stops it stalling is a deadline, as in an SLA: if nobody picks it up, it moves up. How Bedel handles it: escalation to people.
Worth knowing
What people take for granted: that handing over to a person means the AI goes quiet for good. If the conversation is paused with no end date and nobody from the team writes again, the resident is left with no answer from anyone. The pause has to end by itself when the team stops attending.
Related terms
- SLAAn SLA (service level agreement) is a written commitment to the time and quality with which a service is delivered. In a student residence it usually sets how many hours a maintenance ticket has to be picked up or resolved by type, and it is what decides what counts as overdue.
- Org chart and shiftA residence's org chart is the map of roles (management, reception, maintenance, kitchen, housekeeping) and of who holds each one; the shift says who is on duty in each time slot. Together they answer the question that matters when a message comes in: whose job is it right now.
- AI assistantAn AI assistant is a program that holds a conversation in natural language and, with a language model behind it, understands what it is told even without keywords. In a residence it handles the messaging channel: it answers what is in the house rules, takes requests and passes the rest to a person.