A customer writes a message that is technically a routine question and is not really a routine question.
She asks about a refund policy. The message also mentions a bereavement, an unexpected charge and the fact that she has already contacted somebody twice about it.
Answered as a policy question, accurately, it produces a complaint. What it needed was a person, in the first exchange, and the rules for recognising that were never written down.
Escalate when: the customer asks
Immediately and without resistance, since making somebody argue for a person is the fastest way to lose them entirely.
Escalate when: money is involved beyond a routine amount
Refunds, disputes, charges and anything where a wrong answer has a financial consequence for somebody.
Escalate when: there is any safety or health element
Without exception and without attempting to assess it, since this is the category where an automated answer does the most damage.
Escalate when: vulnerability is indicated
Bereavement, illness, financial difficulty or anything suggesting somebody needs care rather than information.
Escalate when: emotion is present
Frustration, distress or anger, regardless of how straightforward the underlying question is, since the question is no longer the point.
Escalate when: it is the second attempt
Somebody contacting again about the same thing has already had one answer that did not work, and a second automated one will not either.
Escalate when: the answer is not certain
A confident wrong answer is considerably worse than a handover, and uncertainty should trigger a person rather than a guess.
Escalate when: it is a complaint
However mildly expressed, since a complaint handled automatically becomes a complaint about being handled automatically.
Do not escalate: the routine questions
Which is most of the volume, and which is what makes the escalations possible to handle well.
Write the rules down rather than relying on judgement
Since the point is consistency, and a rule applied identically every time is better than a judgement that varies.
Bias toward escalating
The costs are asymmetric. A little wasted time against a lost customer, which makes the right bias obvious.
Make the handover carry everything
Since an escalation where the customer repeats themselves is worse than no escalation, which is the ground in handover questions between bot and agent.
Escalate when: the customer is a business account of significance
Where a relationship is worth protecting, the threshold should be lower, and knowing who those customers are is part of writing the rules rather than a judgement made in the moment.
Review: what was escalated and what should have been
Monthly, briefly, since the rules improve from the cases that went wrong in either direction and from nothing else.
Escalate when: the conversation has gone on too long
A long exchange that has not resolved is itself a signal, regardless of the subject, and a simple limit on the number of turns prevents somebody being kept in a loop they cannot escape.
Write the escalation rules before anything goes live
An assistant with explicit rules about money, safety, vulnerability, emotion and repeat contact, biased toward handing over, and passing the full conversation with it, handles the routine volume without ever being the reason a difficult situation became worse. The timing question is set out in when should a chatbot hand over to a human, a sector example in when a gym enquiry needs a person, and the tone rules in tone and brand voice questions from support leads. See it working on the demo, compare on pricing, and the sector view sits under small business.