Live Call Escalation

When a web chat conversation needs human help, your AI agent can place a real phone call — navigating IVR menus, briefing the human agent, and bridging the visitor to the call.

Overview

Live call escalation connects the dots between web chat and phone support:

Visitor chats with your AI agent widget on your website
AI agent determines it can't fully resolve the issue
AI agent collects any required information from the visitor
A phone call is placed to your support number
AI agent navigates any phone menus (IVR) automatically
AI agent briefs the human on what the visitor needs
Visitor is connected to the human via their browser

How It Works

Pre-Call Info Collection

Business owners can define required fields the AI agent must gather before placing a call. For example:

Customer name
Account number
Brief description of the issue

The AI agent asks for this information naturally during the chat conversation.

Many support numbers have phone menus ("Press 1 for billing, press 2 for support..."). hiroi handles this automatically with two modes:

Predefined sequences — configure the exact DTMF button presses (e.g., "1, 2, 0" for billing, English, human agent)
AI auto-detection — the AI agent listens to the IVR prompts and decides which buttons to press based on the visitor's needs

Human Briefing

Before connecting the visitor, the AI agent has a brief conversation with the human:

"Hi, I'm an AI agent calling on behalf of a customer. They need help with a billing discrepancy on their March invoice. Their account number is 12345. I'll connect them now."

Voice Matching

The AI agent speaks on the phone call using your configured TTS voice (ElevenLabs or Azure), so the experience feels consistent across channels.

Configuration

Open your agent in the editor
Go to the Handoff tab
Configure:
Support phone number — the number to call
Required info fields — what the AI agent should collect first
IVR steps — predefined DTMF sequences (or enable auto-detection)

Visitor Experience

From the visitor's perspective in the web chat:

AI agent says "Let me connect you with a human agent"
Chat shows "Placing call..." status
Call connects via the browser (uses WebRTC)
When the call ends, AI agent announces it: "The call with support has ended. Is there anything else I can help with?"

If in voice mode, the call end announcement is spoken via TTS.

Plan Requirements

Live call escalation requires the Scale plan ($99/mo).

Next Steps

Phone Channels — overview of phone features
Inbound Lines — set up a dedicated phone number