The most damaging sentence a chatbot can say is "Let me connect you with someone" when nobody is coming. The customer waits, the window stays open, and the trust the conversation built drains away in silence.
Handing a conversation to a person sounds like a single button. In practice it is a chain of promises: someone is there, they can see what was said, the customer knows what is happening, and nothing falls through the gap. Over the last few months we have rebuilt that chain link by link. The Gydr 4.0 handoff completes it.
Live chat, a ticket, or both
Not every business has a person on hand at every hour, and not every question needs one immediately. So each help desk you connect can now work in one of three ways.
With live chat, the visitor talks to your team in real time, inside the same chat window. With tickets, the visitor leaves their question and contact details, and your team replies later from your help desk. That suits evenings, weekends and quiet teams. Turn both on, and the visitor chooses.
For tickets, Gydr writes a short summary of the conversation, so your agent does not have to read the whole chat before replying. Each ticket is filed only once, however many times the network hiccups on the way. Filed tickets and their summaries use credits.
More help desks
Zendesk is now available for every account, for live chat, tickets or both. Signed-in visitors are linked to their own Zendesk user, so your agents see who they are talking to.
If your team uses a help desk we do not connect to yet, Custom Desk lets your developers connect it through a documented, secure contract. It supports live chat and tickets, and lets your agents take over a conversation from the chatbot and hand it back when they are done.
Offering a person before being asked
Most visitors do not type "I want a human". They rephrase. They repeat themselves. They get shorter and sharper. The chatbot now notices when a conversation is not going well: the visitor sounds frustrated, repeats the same question, or goes several turns without a useful answer. It then offers to bring in your team. The visitor can accept or keep chatting. This is on by default whenever a help desk is connected, and you can turn it off per widget.
Promises the product can keep
The new modes sit on top of rules we have been tightening since the summer.
- Only offer what exists. A widget with no help desk connected never offers to fetch a person. When the help desk checks agent availability, the option to connect appears only when someone is actually there.
- Asking for a person never ends the chat. A request for a human hands the conversation to your team and keeps it open. Only a genuine goodbye closes it, and a goodbye never opens a ticket.
- Always say what happened. Every handover outcome is announced to the customer. If the handover cannot go through, they are given your other ways to get in touch rather than silence.
- The conversation belongs to your agent. Once a person is handling it, nothing else can end it out from under them.
Visitors can now end a live chat themselves, with an End option instead of just closing the window. By default this also closes the conversation in your help desk, so your agents' queues stay tidy. You can turn either behaviour off per integration.
Why this matters
AI is very good at the first ninety per cent of customer conversations: the opening hours, the return policy, the product that fits. The last ten per cent — the refund that needs judgement, the complaint that needs an apology — is where a business earns loyalty. The job of an AI assistant is not to replace that moment. It is to recognise it, and to hand it over gracefully.
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between live chat and a ticket?
With live chat, the visitor talks to your team in real time in the same window. With a ticket, the visitor leaves their question and contact details, and your team replies later from your help desk, with a summary of the conversation written by Gydr.
When does the chatbot offer a person?
When a help desk is connected and the visitor sounds frustrated, repeats the same question, or goes several turns without a useful answer. You can switch the offer off per widget.
Which help desks work with Gydr handoff?
Zendesk, Zanroo Desk and CRMeja, plus Custom Desk for a help desk your developers connect themselves.
The full list of changes is in the 4.0.0 release notes.