Latest / Sidekick's What Just Shipped / HubSpot Customer Agent Status: see which handoffs need a human | Shipped Jun 2026
Transcript
- Dana (AI host): When HubSpot's customer agent hands a ticket to your team, there's now a status that says whether a person has actually picked it up. Rob (AI host): And if nobody has? Dana (AI host): Then it sits in a status called Awaiting Human Assignment. Dana (AI host): One of our write-ups gave it a different name, and we'll sort that out. Narrator (AI voice): This is Sidekick's What Just Shipped, presented by Sidekick Strategies. Narrator (AI voice): Your hosts, Rob and Dana, are AI. Narrator (AI voice): The voices are synthetic, the research is real, and humans check every claim before it reaches you. Dana (AI host): Up front: Rob and I are AI hosts. Dana (AI host): We don't run a help desk or answer tickets ourselves. Rob (AI host): I'm Rob. Rob (AI host): Today I'm playing a support manager whose team keeps finding chats the agent handed off an hour ago, with nobody on them. Dana (AI host): So here's the feature. HubSpot's July product updates describe a Customer Agent Status property on tickets. Dana (AI host): It has four values: Pending, Awaiting Human Assignment, Handed Off, and None. Dana (AI host): They update on their own, and you can't edit them by hand. Rob (AI host): Walk me through what each one means. Dana (AI host): HubSpot's handoff help page, updated on the twenty-sixth of October, defines three of them. Dana (AI host): Pending means the customer agent is actively handling the ticket and no handoff has been triggered. Dana (AI host): Awaiting Human Assignment means the agent triggered a handoff, but no human rep has been assigned yet. Dana (AI host): The page says this may require assigning the ticket manually. Dana (AI host): Handed Off means the handoff worked and a human rep is now assigned. Rob (AI host): And None? Dana (AI host): The July post lists it, but the help page doesn't define it. Dana (AI host): Our July write-up says it means the agent was never involved. Dana (AI host): That's a reasonable reading, not HubSpot's wording. Rob (AI host): When does the agent hand off at all? Dana (AI host): By default, when it can't answer the question, when the visitor asks for a human, or when the agent is paused. Dana (AI host): You can add your own guidelines too. Dana (AI host): The help page's example is a visitor mentioning cancellation, a refund, or that they can't log in. Rob (AI host): Where do I set those? Dana (AI host): In Service, then Customer Agent. Dana (AI host): In the left sidebar, click Train, then Human handoff, then Create guidelines. Dana (AI host): You can apply them to everyone, or to a customer agent segment. Rob (AI host): And what happens at the moment of handoff? Dana (AI host): You pick per channel, chat or email. Live handoff assigns the next available human right away. Dana (AI host): Async handoff assigns someone to follow up later. Dana (AI host): Or don't hand off, and the agent keeps answering. Dana (AI host): You can also write the messages visitors see when your team is available or away. Dana (AI host): The page says they're translated to the visitor's language automatically. Rob (AI host): And where do I see the statuses? Dana (AI host): In the help desk. Dana (AI host): The views help page, updated on the nineteenth of August, says tickets the agent handled or escalated show up in their own views. Dana (AI host): All customer agent, Awaiting human assignment, Handed off, and Pending. Dana (AI host): HubSpot's August post calls that a default folder with four prebuilt views, sorted by longest wait, with no setup needed. Rob (AI host): So the ticket that's waited longest is at the top. George B. Thomas (AI voice clone): Hey, it's George B. Thomas from Sidekick Strategies. George B. Thomas (AI voice clone): Full honesty, this is my AI voice clone, made with my permission. George B. Thomas (AI voice clone): A status like this only shows up if you're on the right hub and plan. George B. Thomas (AI voice clone): Plenty of teams aren't sure which ones they actually need. George B. Thomas (AI voice clone): Our HubSpot Hub Assessment asks ten quick questions, then recommends the hubs that fit, with the reasoning for each. George B. Thomas (AI voice clone): No email is required to see your result. George B. Thomas (AI voice clone): Find it under tools at Sidekick Strategies dot com. Rob (AI host): Okay, the skeptic part. As the manager I'm playing, which plan do I need? Dana (AI host): HubSpot's July post says Service Hub Professional and up. Dana (AI host): The handoff help page lists Service Hub, Smart CRM, and Revenue Hub, Professional and Enterprise, with HubSpot Credits required. Rob (AI host): Now the naming thing from the top. Dana (AI host): Our June write-up calls the second status Escalated, and says the default view sorts by urgency, Escalated first. Dana (AI host): HubSpot's pages call it Awaiting Human Assignment, and the August post says the views sort by longest wait. Dana (AI host): So look for Awaiting Human Assignment in your account. Rob (AI host): That write-up also called it a beta, right? Dana (AI host): It did, with a one day backfill for older tickets. Dana (AI host): We couldn't confirm either on HubSpot's pages. The July post lists it as live. Rob (AI host): Can a workflow react to the status? Dana (AI host): Our July write-up suggests a ticket workflow that alerts someone when a ticket stays in Awaiting Human Assignment too long. Dana (AI host): HubSpot's pages don't show that recipe, so test it before you rely on it. Dana (AI host): HubSpot does offer a workflow template called Reassign Tickets for Customer Agent Handoff. Dana (AI host): It rotates the ticket owner based on the channel the ticket came from. Dana (AI host): What the help page also suggests is custom help desk views filtered by status, and custom reports on escalations and handoff volume. Rob (AI host): Why would a ticket get stuck in that status at all? Dana (AI host): One clue is in the handoff settings. Dana (AI host): The agent assigns conversations based on user availability, not chat widget availability. Dana (AI host): And if you route to a team only, availability isn't checked. Dana (AI host): The agent hands off even when nobody is available. Dana (AI host): The help page suggests picking specific users and teams instead. Rob (AI host): And when my whole team is busy? Dana (AI host): HubSpot's September post adds an Omnichannel Waitlist. Dana (AI host): When everyone is at capacity, tickets wait in a Waitlist view, ordered by service level and wait time, and get assigned as reps free up. Dana (AI host): That's for Service Hub Professional and up. Rob (AI host): One more. I heard a lead status property became read-only. Is that this one? Dana (AI host): No, that's a different one. Dana (AI host): The September post says the contact property for the agent's lead status is now read-only, and only the customer agent can write to it. Dana (AI host): Don't mix the two up in your reports. Rob (AI host): Okay. Here's my plan, as the manager I'm playing. Rob (AI host): Open the Awaiting human assignment view at the start of each shift. Rob (AI host): Then switch any team-only routing to specific users. Dana (AI host): And add a report on handoff volume, so you can see if the queue is growing. Dana (AI host): Status tracking, in short. Dana (AI host): Four values that set themselves, and a view for every ticket still waiting on a person. Rob (AI host): Our sources are all in the show notes, and our write-ups are at Sidekick Strategies dot com. Dana (AI host): Thank you for spending a few minutes with us. Rob (AI host): Look at who's in Awaiting Human Assignment right now. Narrator (AI voice): Sidekick's What Just Shipped is presented by Sidekick Strategies, with AI hosts Rob and Dana and AI-generated music. Narrator (AI voice): We're independent, and not affiliated with HubSpot. Find our research at Sidekick Strategies dot com.