Live chat and handoff
Chat routing and match status
For every new website conversation, Stand builds an eligible set from the matched Site, organization capacity, Available reps, and enabled AI Stand-ins. It routes to an Available rep first; when Stand-in coverage is active, enabled Stand-ins can cover chats when no rep is Available or every eligible rep is at capacity.
- Availability
- All plans
- Configured in
- Automatic at chat start; inspect in Dashboard → Sites → Chat widget status
- Category
- Live chat and handoff
- Reference status
- Current
Before you begin
Plan availability: All plans.
Prerequisite: A registered, enabled, installed Site matched to the page and remaining organization chat capacity.
Key boundary: Chat widget status is a live diagnostic, not a permanent routing promise. Availability, capacity, connections, enablement, and page path can change the eligible set before the next visitor starts.
How a new chat is matched
| Stage | Eligibility check |
|---|---|
| 1. Site | The script’s Site exists, is enabled and installed, and its normalized domain matches the visitor page. |
| 2. Organization | The organization can reserve a new chat from included quota or an already-funded chat balance. |
| 3. Humans | Reps must be Available, connected, below their concurrent limit, active members, and personally covering the Site with I chat here. |
| 4. AI Stand-ins | Stand-in coverage must be active, and Stand-ins must be enabled and satisfy their owner, Site, path, and organization eligibility. |
| 5. Assignment | Stand selects among eligible humans with the fewest active assignments. Otherwise it finds each member’s most specific eligible Stand-ins, then divides AI traffic between those members. |
| 6. Admission | Before creating the conversation, Stand rechecks the exact current Site, organization, member, responder, and path binding. A stale or cross-Site selection is rejected without consuming chat capacity. |
Stand-in specificity and probability
- Within each member’s eligible Stand-ins, a matching path-specialized Stand-in ranks ahead of Site-wide coverage, which ranks ahead of general coverage.
- All matching nonblank paths have the same rank. Exact paths and wildcard paths can tie; neither path length nor creation order breaks that tie.
- Each member with eligible AI coverage receives an equal share. Stand divides that member’s share equally among their remaining Stand-ins. Another member’s general Stand-in is not displaced by someone else’s specialist.
- I chat here controls human coverage and does not restrict a member’s general Stand-ins. Site and path specialization constrain the Stand-ins instead.
- Human-first routing is evaluated before AI fallback; Stand-in specificity does not override a valid human assignment.
Example: probability is shared by member
Suppose no human is eligible. Ava owns two equally eligible docs Stand-ins, and Ben owns one general Stand-in. On a matching docs page, Ava and Ben each receive half the chance of selection. Ava’s two Stand-ins each receive 25%; Ben’s receives 50%. Creating more Stand-ins does not increase a member’s total share.
If Ava also has a general Stand-in, her matching docs specialists exclude that general Stand-in on this page. They do not exclude Ben’s general Stand-in. These names and percentages illustrate the rule, not a dashboard snapshot.
Read Chat widget status
Open Dashboard → Sites, expand the relevant Site, and inspect Chat widget status. It shows the current Site-level responders and probability split. It does not evaluate a specific visitor path, so its Stand-in set and percentages can differ from the lookup on a particular page.
Use the panel to check human availability, capacity, personal I chat here coverage, Stand-in coverage, and enablement. Then start a new conversation on the intended path to verify specialization. Navigating an existing chat does not run routing again.
Routing outcomes
| Eligible responders | New visitor result |
|---|---|
| Available reps | Stand prefers those with the fewest active human assignments and splits equally among a tie. The selected rep uses one concurrent slot. |
| No rep Available; eligible Stand-in | The selected AI Stand-in starts the conversation, and reps can monitor or join later. |
| Several eligible Stand-ins | Stand applies per-member specialization, then equal member shares and equal shares within each member’s remaining set. |
| No responder or no chat capacity | The widget does not start a normal new conversation; the visitor receives the applicable unavailable or capacity behavior. |
Timing and boundaries
- Routing is decided for a new session. Later availability changes do not automatically move an active conversation.
- Query strings and hash fragments do not create distinct Stand-in path matches.
- Notifications do not make a rep eligible; eligibility exists before an assignment alert is sent.
- I chat here and Stand-in specialization are separate coverage systems and should be diagnosed separately.