A support chatbot that says "I don't know" and hands off to a human

The most expensive thing a support chatbot can do is answer with confidence when it should not answer at all. A wrong refund rule or an invented feature costs more than a ticket: it costs trust, and often a second ticket to undo the first answer. Paperlink AI is built to stop at the edge of your content and pass the visitor to a person.

How it works in Paperlink AI

The refusal

Before the bot writes anything, it searches your documents and imported pages for passages that fit the question. The answer model then gets one instruction: answer only from those passages, and say so if the answer is not there. When no passage is relevant, the bot does not try. It tells the visitor that it does not know.

That refusal is a designed outcome, not an error. On the Conversations page it carries the label Didn't know, and it is free: replies the bot can't answer are free. You are never billed for the bot admitting a gap.

The "Need a human?" card

Right after a refusal, the widget shows a card titled "Need a human?". What it offers depends on the support contact you set in Settings:

The same card appears in two other cases, so no visitor meets a dead end: when your workspace has used all its replies, and when your workspace has no active plan. At your limit the widget shows your contact card instead of going silent.

"Send this conversation to support"

With the transcript option on, a visitor can hand the whole conversation to your team in one click, with an optional note and email address. Paperlink AI then does two things. It adds a support request to the Support requests page of your dashboard, and it emails the conversation, note and address to your support email, with a link back to the request. Your team does not have to ask the visitor to repeat the question.

Working the Support requests page

1. Open a request

   The list shows open requests first, newest at the top. Filter by Open, Closed or All.

2. Read the conversation

   The drawer shows the visitor's email address, their note and the full exchange with the bot.

3. Reply by email

   Select Copy email and answer from your own email app. Then close the request, or reopen it later.

Admins and Members can read and close requests. A visitor can send each conversation one time, and a workspace can send up to 50 transcript emails each day. Setup takes a few fields; the support contact guide has every step.

What Paperlink AI does not do

Be clear about the limits before you choose. Paperlink AI does not offer live chat takeover: your team replies by email, not inside the widget. It does not create tickets in an outside help desk, and it does not route by topic or business hours. If your team needs agents to join conversations as they happen, you need a live chat product alongside or instead of Paperlink AI.

What to look for in any tool

"Escalates to a human" can mean very different things. When you compare support chatbots, ask:

• What triggers the handoff? Some bots hand off only when a visitor types "agent". The safer trigger is the bot's own refusal: when it cannot answer from your content, it should offer a person without being asked.
• Does the bot refuse at all? A handoff button does not help if the bot guesses first. Ask the vendor what the model does when your content is silent, and test it with questions you know are not covered.
• Does context travel with the visitor? The person who picks up should see the conversation, not a blank ticket.
• Where does the handoff land? Email, a help desk, or a live inbox. Match it to how your team already works, and check who can read the transcripts.
• Are refusals billed? If every refusal costs a reply, the pricing rewards a bot that guesses.
• What happens at the plan limit? A widget that goes silent when the allowance runs out leaves visitors with nothing. It should show your contact details instead.

Close the loop

Every refusal is also a signal. The questions behind them collect in the Unanswered report, which shows what to write next: see find gaps in your documentation. For the reasons bots invent answers and the controls that stop it, read how to stop an AI chatbot from making up answers. If your team answers the handed-off emails, the free AI reply generator and canned responses library help you draft them faster.