# Help desk overview

> One ticket inbox for every door: chat handoffs, voicemails, missed calls, workflow escalations. Channel badges, assignment, scheduling, translation, and AI-drafted replies.

The help desk is where humans take over. Everything the AI shouldn't finish — "talk to a person", a voicemail, a refund request, a failed answer — becomes a **ticket** in one inbox, with a channel badge and the full conversation attached, so nobody repeats themselves.

## Where tickets come from

| Source | Example |
| --- | --- |
| Chat handoff | The website visitor asks for a human; the ticket opens with the transcript. |
| Voice | A voicemail arrives transcribed as a ticket; missed and after-hours calls can ticket too, per your [connection settings](/docs/doors/ai-receptionist). |
| Workflow escalations | Any flow's [notify step](/docs/workflows/notifications) can open a ticket — "refund requested", "AI couldn't answer", "P1 from an enterprise customer". |
| Email | The support address feeds the same inbox. |
| Social & SMS | DM and text escalations land with their channel badge. |

## Working the inbox

- **Assignment** — rules route tickets to the right person; manual reassign any time.
- **AI-drafted replies** — the agent proposes a response from knowledge and history; the human edits and sends.
- **Scheduling** — business hours drive expectations and after-hours behavior.
- **Translation** — read and reply across languages; each side sees their own.
- **Status & views** — open/pending/resolved, filters, and saved views for the queues your team actually works.

## Voice tickets are the sleeper feature

The morning shift at a clinic used to start with a full voicemail box. With voicemail → ticket, it starts with a triaged queue: transcribed, attributed to the caller's [contact](/docs/crm/contacts), assignable, and impossible to lose. That one change is most of the "we feel organized now" effect.

> **ESCALATION IS A FEATURE, NOT A FAILURE:** Configure the AI to hand off eagerly on the topics that matter ([guardrails](/docs/ai/guardrails)) — an honest ticket beats a confident wrong answer, and the transcript means the human starts warm.