Actions
Escalate to Human
The built-in action that hands a conversation to your team, pausing automatic replies and placing it in the inbox queue.
Escalate to Human is a system action that lets your agent bring a person into the conversation. It's included on every plan, never counts against your action limit, and is always on, so your agent can always reach your team when it needs to.
When your agent escalates
By default, the agent escalates when:
- a request is sensitive or complex
- it can't answer confidently
- the customer asks for a person
- the customer is clearly upset
You can change this by editing the action's instructions. Along with each escalation, the agent writes a short reason that sums up why it's handing over and what the customer needs.
What happens when a conversation is escalated
- The agent sends its reply, letting the customer know a teammate will pick things up. It's told not to promise a response time.
- Automatic replies stop on that conversation. Your agent won't answer it again until a teammate hands it back.
- The conversation moves into the Queue view in the Inbox, where it shows how long the customer has been waiting.
- Your team is notified in the notification bell and by email. If the conversation is assigned, only the assignee is told. If not, the whole workspace is told, so anyone can pick it up.
From there, a teammate takes over and replies from the inbox. See Replying and takeover.
Escalation is not a case. It means "a person needs to answer this chat now". If the customer's request needs follow-up work that outlives the conversation, such as a refund to process or a bug to investigate, use Create case as well.
Each teammate can choose whether to get escalation emails under Escalated conversations in their notification settings. The bell notification is always shown.
Edit Escalate to Human
You can't delete or switch off Escalate to Human, but you can shape how it works.
Open the action
Go to Actions. Under System actions, click Edit on the Escalate to Human card. The card is marked Always on.
Tune the instructions
Rewrite the Instructions (up to 500 characters) to describe exactly when your agent should hand over. For example, you might want every billing dispute escalated, or only escalate after the agent has tried to help.
Add details to collect (optional)
In Details to collect, add anything you want the agent to ask before handing over, such as an order number. This saves your team asking again.
Save
Click Save changes.
Name the situations you care about most. "Escalate any message that mentions a chargeback, legal action or a safety issue" is clearer to the agent than "Escalate serious issues".
Other ways a conversation reaches the queue
Escalate to Human isn't the only route into your team's queue:
- Hand to the team — many actions, such as Calendly, Slack and Create case, have a When it's done setting that sends the conversation to the queue once the action has finished.
- Intercom — filing an Intercom ticket always hands the conversation to your team.
- When the agent can't reply — if your agent can't answer at all (for example because your plan's AI conversations are used up), the customer gets a short holding message and the conversation is escalated, so nobody is left waiting in silence.