What good handoff notes have in common, from 400 we read

When an agent hands a conversation to someone else in Mailslot, they can leave a note that only the team sees. With permission from 12 customers, we read 400 of those notes from June 2026 and compared them with what happened next.

The three questions

In conversations that were solved without the customer repeating themselves, the note almost always covered three things: what the customer wants, what has already been tried, and what the next person should do first. The median length was 31 words.

What bad notes looked like

A quarter of the notes were one word or a name: “Billing”, “For Sam”, “FYI”. After those, the next agent asked the customer a question they had already answered 38% of the time. After a three-part note it was 6%.

Long notes weren't better

Notes over 100 words did no better than 30-word ones. The next agent skimmed them. One team writes every note as three lines starting with Wants, Tried and Next, and their notes were the easiest to act on.

A template you can paste

Wants: a refund for the second charge on May 3. Tried: confirmed both charges in Stripe, not refunded yet. Next: refund $26 and reply with the receipt.

We added this as an optional note template in August. Turn it on under Settings, Handoffs.