How Escalation Rules Protect Your Caller Experience

Not every call can or should be handled entirely by AI. Escalation rules give you precise control over when a call gets transferred to a human, and how that handoff happens.

What Escalation Rules Are

An escalation rule has three parts:

1. Conditions: what triggers the escalation
2. Action and destination: transfer the call (to a team member, a call group, or a phone number), or take a message instead
3. Agent behavior: what the agent says, and doesn't say, during the handoff

Available Conditions

• Caller requests human: the caller explicitly asks for a person ("Let me talk to someone")
• Caller sentiment: the caller sounds frustrated, angry, or threatening. You pick the level that should trigger the rule.
• Keyword detected: specific words or phrases trigger escalation ("lawsuit", "complaint", "manager")
• Call duration: the call runs past a time limit without resolution
• Repeated failures: the agent fails to help after multiple attempts
• Custom condition: describe the situation in plain language and the agent judges whether it applies

A rule can have more than one condition. When it does, all of them must be true for the rule to fire.

Screening Who Gets Transferred

By default, a caller who asks for a person gets one: the "Caller requests human" rule transfers, and a caller who asks for someone on your team by name is connected through team routing. If you want your agent to screen those requests first, add a Custom condition to your "Caller requests human" transfer rule that describes who qualifies, in plain language. For example: "The caller is an existing customer whose account we have located, or is asking for a named team member and has given their own name and a reason. Sales and vendor calls do not qualify; take a message."

Once that rule has both conditions, your agent applies it to every transfer, including requests for a specific person by name. A caller who meets the description is connected as usual. A caller who does not is helped by the agent directly, or gets a message taken, instead of being put through. Asking for a person is not, by itself, enough.

Keep the description about who the caller is and what you can already do for them, not about keywords. The agent judges it from the conversation, so "a carrier we are already working with" works better than a list of phrases. Once a rule has a custom condition, the agent decides when it applies; the rule no longer fires on the keywords alone.

Available Actions

• Transfer: the agent tells the caller who it's connecting them with and rings the destination. If nobody answers, the caller hears a short message that someone will call them back and the call ends, so make sure the destination is staffed during the hours the rule matters.
• Take a message: the agent collects the caller's details and what they need, and your team gets the message by email right away. Pick this for rules where you'd rather follow up than interrupt someone. It's also what happens automatically when a transfer isn't possible, for example when the destination is away or the business is closed.

Transfers only happen during business hours. When your business is closed, every rule takes a message instead; your agent still books appointments and answers questions as normal.

Agent Behavior During Escalation

You configure what the agent says when escalating:

• "Let me connect you with someone who can help with that directly."
• "I want to make sure you get the best help on this — let me transfer you to our billing team."
• "I understand this needs personal attention. Let me get you to the right person."

You can also tell the agent what not to say, for example not to quote a timeframe for a callback.

What Gets Recorded

Every escalation is recorded on the call: the call detail shows which rule fired and why. The call.escalation_triggered webhook fires the moment it happens, for any integrations you've connected, and your call notification recipients get an escalation email once the call ends.

If the same rule fires frequently, that's a signal: you might need to add more knowledge so your agent can handle those calls directly.

No Escalation Rules

If you have no active escalation rules, your agent won't escalate on its own; it takes a message or arranges a callback instead. A caller who asks for someone on your team by name can still be connected through team routing during business hours.

Location-Specific Rules

Escalation rules can be scoped to specific locations. Your downtown office might escalate emergency calls to an on-site provider, while your satellite office takes a message for the same situation.

You can ask Allison to add, update, enable, disable, or delete escalation rules — through the dashboard chat or by calling Allison. Complex multi-condition rules are best configured through the dashboard.

Fallback Phone Number

Every account has one required fallback phone number, set during onboarding and editable under Settings. It serves two roles:

1. Safety net. If the Allison voice service is ever temporarily unreachable, your inbound calls are routed to this number by the phone carrier layer. Callers reach a real person instead of a "we're sorry" message.
2. Starting point for your default rules. The escalation rules created for you when you add your first number point at the fallback number, and updating the fallback also updates any rule still pointing at the old value. A rule with no destination of its own takes a message rather than transferring.

Because it's our last-line guarantee that callers reach someone, the fallback number is required and cannot be cleared. To change it, enter a new valid 10-digit US number before saving.