Handoff
Escalation rules
Autopilot only works if you trust the handover. Botdesk bots know their limits: the moment a conversation turns sensitive, expensive or unclear, it moves to a person — with a summary of everything so far, so nobody asks the customer to start over.
The handover is where trust is won or lost
Everyone has lived the bad version: ten minutes with a chatbot, then a human appears and asks 'how can I help you today?' — as if nothing happened. That one moment undoes all the speed the bot delivered, because the customer pays the time twice. It is also the moment support leads point to when they explain why they switched their last bot off.
Botdesk treats the handover as the product, not an afterthought. The escalation itself takes no visible time, the summary means the human starts informed, and the routing rules mean it is the right human. Customers experience one continuous conversation that simply got smarter halfway through.
Escalation is a policy, not a panic button
The rules are yours, written in plain language next to each bot's playbook: which amounts need approval, which words mean 'stop', which customers always get a person. Cautious defaults come built in — a new bot escalates generously, and you widen its authority as its track record earns it.
Overnight, escalations do not vanish into a void. The night-shift bot resolves what it can, files the rest as a prioritized morning queue with summaries attached, and flags anything that should not wait. Opening the laptop to an organized list instead of a wall of unread chats is the moment most teams say the autopilot clicked.
Triggers you can set
- Refunds over a set amount
- Frustrated or upset tone
- VIP and wholesale customers
- Damaged or lost orders
- Billing disputes
- Legal-sounding requests
- Customer asks for a human
- Bot unsure of the answer
- handover arrives with a summary already written
- Every
- for a teammate to take over mid-conversation
- 1 click
- customers retell their story after a handoff
- 0 times
- of the queue for anything marked urgent
- Front
What happens when a bot steps aside
The bot recognizes its limit
A trigger fires — the amount is above the ceiling, the tone turns frustrated, the topic is on the always-escalate list, or the bot simply is not confident in its answer.
A summary is written
The bot condenses the conversation into a few lines: what the customer asked, what was already checked or offered, and what remains open. Nobody scrolls through history to catch up.
The right person gets it
Rules route the case to the right place — billing disputes to the owner, VIP orders to the senior agent, everything else to the shared queue — with urgent cases placed at the front.
A person finishes with context
Your teammate opens the chat, reads the summary, and continues the conversation mid-sentence. The customer never notices a seam — just that a human showed up already informed.
Frequently asked questions
- Will customers get stuck with a bot when they really need a person?
- No — 'the customer asks for a human' is a standard trigger, on by default. Say the word and the conversation moves to your team with a summary. Bots that trap people in loops are exactly the failure Botdesk was built to avoid.
- What happens at night when nobody is around to take the handoff?
- The conversation is answered honestly: the bot says when the team will reply, files the case in the morning queue with its summary, and marks urgency. Your team starts the day with a sorted, contextualized list instead of an inbox full of mysteries.
- Who decides the escalation rules — us or the system?
- You do, in plain language. Sensible defaults ship out of the box so day one is safe, but every ceiling, topic and routing choice is yours to edit. Most teams review the rules after the first week of real conversations and adjust two or three.
- What about genuinely angry customers?
- Frustrated tone is a trigger on its own: the bot stops trying to be helpful in the wrong way and brings in a person quickly, marking the case urgent. The teammate arrives with the summary, so the customer's first human contact starts with 'I see what happened' — not 'please explain'.
- Can escalations go to a specific person rather than a shared queue?
- Yes. Route by topic, customer type or amount: billing disputes to the founder, wholesale accounts to their manager, everything else to the general queue. Assignments, notes and the full history travel with the conversation.