Managing Escalations (Needs Attention)
Handle urgent or complex conversations that require human intervention
What Are Escalations
Escalations are conversations flagged for immediate human attention. They appear on the Needs attention page, and the most urgent also surface in the "Needs you now" queue on your Dashboard home.
Trigger Types
| Trigger | Source | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Emergency keyword | AI intent detection | Customer mentions flooding, fire, or a safety concern |
| Frustration signal | Sentiment analysis | Repeated objections or negative language patterns |
| Human request | Explicit customer action | Customer says "let me talk to a person" |
| Quote rejection | Pipeline event | Customer declines a quote (configurable in AI Receptionist › Text replies) |
| Low confidence | AI thresholds | The AI is not confident enough in its answer to send it |
Working the Queue
Each row shows the customer, a link to the lead, and which escalation rule fired (rows without a rule show a Fallback badge). Two actions move an item through the queue:
Acknowledge
Claim the escalation so teammates know a person is on it.
Review context before responding
Open the lead, read the full conversation history, then contact the customer through the thread in Inbox.
Resolve
When handled, mark it resolved — it leaves the queue. Prioritize emergencies first, then oldest unresolved items.
Troubleshooting
| Issue | Likely Cause | Fix |
|---|---|---|
| Escalation not triggering on urgent messages | Handoff rules or thresholds not configured | Review AI Receptionist › Text replies handoff rules and sentiment/confidence thresholds |
| Too many false-positive escalations | Trigger thresholds too sensitive | Raise the confidence threshold or relax the sentiment handoff threshold |
| Queue shows nothing but customers report waiting | Web-chat handoffs live in their own queue | Check Web chat › Live chat for pending chat handoffs |