Escalation
How leads get handed off to your agents automatically and manually.
Automatic Triggers
A lead is automatically escalated to a human agent when any of the following conditions are met:
- High-confidence interest — The AI classifies the lead's reply as "Interested" with greater than 70% confidence.
- Max auto-replies reached — The lead's reply count exceeds your configured max auto-replies setting (default: 3). This prevents the AI from going back and forth indefinitely.
- Escalation keywords detected — The lead's reply contains phrases like "call me", "schedule", "appointment", "meet", "phone call", or "let's talk".
- Manual trigger — You click "Escalate to agent" from the conversation view.
Only one trigger needs to fire for escalation to occur. The system checks all conditions on every inbound reply.
What Happens on Escalation
When a lead is escalated, the following actions happen automatically:
- Status Change — The lead's pipeline status changes to "Escalated" and the AI stops sending automatic replies.
- Agent Assignment — The system assigns the best-fit team member based on specialty match and current workload.
- Handoff Email — A handoff email is sent to the lead, CC'ing your assigned agent. The email includes the agent's phone number for direct contact.
- Slack Notification — If a Slack webhook URL is configured in Settings, a notification is sent to your team channel.
Manual Escalation
You can manually escalate any active lead from the conversation view. Click the "Escalate to agent" button in the conversation thread to immediately trigger the escalation flow.
Manual escalation follows the exact same process as automatic escalation: agent assignment, handoff email, and notifications all fire.
Use manual escalation when you spot a lead that looks promising but hasn't triggered the automatic rules yet, or if you want to intervene and fast-track a lead to an agent.
Agent Assignment
When a lead is escalated, the system picks the best agent using the following priority logic:
Assignment Priority
| Priority | Rule | Description |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Role preference | Managers are preferred over agents for escalation assignments. |
| 2 | Specialty matching | The lead's insurance type is matched against team members' configured specialties (e.g., an auto insurance lead goes to an agent with "Auto Insurance" specialty). |
| 3 | Lowest utilization | Among matching candidates, the agent with the lowest current utilization (open leads / queue capacity) is chosen. |
| 4 | Queue capacity | Agents at maximum capacity are skipped. An agent won't be assigned if their open leads equal their queue limit. |
If no agents match the specialty or all agents are at capacity, the lead will be escalated but flagged as "unassigned." Check your team roster if you see unassigned escalations.