Escalations
What happens when your Aijent cannot help, and how to make sure the right person hears about it.
When a visitor needs a person, Aijent Relay captures their details and notifies your team by email, and in Slack if you connect it. The email carries a summary, the full conversation as an attachment, and replies go straight back to the visitor. The escalation email address is required and set during setup. Slack alerts deliberately never include the transcript.
When a visitor needs a person, your Aijent captures their details and passes it on. That hand-off is an escalation, and it is the core of what Relay does.
When your Aijent escalates
It offers to get a person involved when:
- The answer is not in your knowledge base
- The visitor simply asks for a human
It never guesses in order to avoid escalating.
The visitor gives their name and how to reach them, and your team is notified.
Where escalations go
Set this on the Escalations tab of your Aijent.
By email. This is required, and you set it during setup, because an escalation with nowhere to go is a lost customer. You can change the address at any time.
To Slack, optionally. A message the moment it happens, in the channel you choose. See Slack escalation alerts.
Both can run together. Most teams do exactly that: Slack for the nudge, email for the record.
What the email contains
- A summary of what the visitor wanted, so whoever opens it knows the situation without reading everything.
- The full conversation, attached as a text file.
- The visitor's details, and replies go straight back to the visitor, so your team can simply hit reply.
- A link to the conversation in your dashboard.
Slack alerts deliberately never include the conversation itself. A team channel is the wrong place for a customer's words. The alert carries who it is, how to reach them and what they need, with a button to open the full conversation.
What details you ask for
Every escalation captures the visitor's name. Beyond that, two settings on the Escalations tab decide what else your Aijent asks for.
Ask for a phone number. On by default. Turn it off and your Aijent collects name and email only.
Require it to be a mobile. Only applies when you are asking for a phone number. With this on, a landline is not accepted.
Which combination to choose
Phone on, mobile required suits teams who call back and often send a text first. It is the strictest, and it will cost you a few enquiries from people who only have a landline or will not give a mobile.
Phone on, mobile not required is the sensible default for most. You get a number to call, and a landline is still a way to reach somebody.
Phone off suits teams who reply by email. Asking for a phone number you never use is friction that loses you enquiries for nothing.
Match it to what your team actually does. If nobody ever picks up the phone, asking for a number is costing you escalations and gaining you nothing.
Naming it something your team understands
By default these are called escalations. If your team calls them something else, a callback, an enquiry, a support request, you can change the label so your Aijent and your alerts use your own word for it.
What the visitor sees afterwards
After somebody asks for a person, your Aijent confirms it and tells them what happens next. You can set that message yourself, which is worth doing: "Someone will call you within the hour" sets a very different expectation from a generic thank you. Only promise what you can keep.
Making escalations work
Send them somewhere watched. A shared inbox nobody opens is where escalations go to die. If your team lives in Slack, connect Slack.
Answer fast. Somebody who asks to speak to a person is at the point of deciding. The difference between an hour and a day is enormous.
Work them in your conversations inbox so statuses and notes stay current and nobody doubles up.
Watch what keeps escalating. If the same question comes up repeatedly, that is not an escalation problem, it is a gap in your knowledge base. Fill it and those conversations stop needing a person at all.