Set Up Escalation to Your Team
Set Up Escalation to Your Team
Escalation is how Lyro hands a conversation to a human when it cannot resolve the issue on its own or when a customer asks for a person. This guide walks you through deciding when to escalate, choosing a destination, configuring per-agent procedures and workspace-wide rules, and testing the handoff end to end.
Step 1: Decide when to escalate
Lyro escalates in two complementary ways, and you can use either or both:
- Per-agent procedures - your agent decides, based on the conversation, that a human is needed (for example, the customer asks for someone, or the agent cannot find an answer).
- Global rules - workspace-wide safety nets that fire independently of the agent's judgment, so nothing slips through.
A good starting point is to escalate when the customer explicitly asks for a human, or when the agent has tried and still cannot resolve the issue.
Step 2: Choose a destination
Open the Escalation page in the dashboard. On the right, under Destinations, you connect the systems your agents are allowed to route to. A destination only becomes selectable once it is connected.
| Destination | What it does |
|---|---|
| Live teammate | Hands the conversation to a human teammate inside Lyro. It moves into your inbox so a teammate can take over in real time. |
| Zendesk | Creates a support ticket in Zendesk. |
| Intercom | Forwards the conversation to Intercom. |
| Sends an escalation email to an address you choose. | |
| API (custom) | Surfaces the escalation on the chat API response so you can route to a human in your own system. |
To configure a destination:
- Live teammate is available as soon as your workspace has at least one teammate.
- Email - click Configure, enter the recipient address, and optionally a "from" name.
- API (custom) - click Configure to enable it, then read the escalation event from the chat API response in your own backend.
- Zendesk and Intercom are connected from the Integrations area; once connected they appear as available here.
Some channels cannot be taken over live. For example, an email conversation cannot become a live teammate chat - in that case have your procedure fall back to an email or ticket destination.
Step 3: Configure per-agent procedures
Still on the Escalation page, scroll to Escalation Procedures. A procedure tells an agent when and how to hand off.
Click New Procedure and fill in:
- Name - an internal label, for example "Standard Escalation".
- Trigger - a plain-language description of when the agent should consider escalating, such as "When the customer asks for a human, or when you cannot resolve the issue."
- Instructions - the step-by-step procedure the agent follows, for example collecting the customer's name and email, summarizing the issue, and then escalating.
- Destinations - check which connected destinations this procedure may use. Destinations that are not connected appear greyed out.
Save the procedure, then attach it to the agents that should use it. See escalation for the full reference on how procedures and triggers work.
Step 4: Add global rules as a safety net
Global rules apply across the workspace and catch cases your agent might miss. Turn them on with the master toggle, then enable the rules you want:
- Human request - escalates when the customer's message matches phrases that signal they want a person.
- Repeated intent - escalates when the customer keeps asking about the same thing across exchanges.
- Max exchanges - escalates once a conversation runs past a number of back-and-forth exchanges you set.
Rules are checked in order and the first match wins. If both a rule and the agent decide to escalate, the conversation is still handed off once.
Step 5: Test the handoff
- Open a test conversation through your chat-widget or another connected channel.
- Trigger escalation - for example, type "I want to talk to a human."
- Confirm the conversation routes to the destination you configured (a ticket appears in the external tool, an email arrives, or the chat lands in your inbox for a live teammate).
- Back on the Escalation page, check that the new ticket shows up in the list with the right status, customer, and summary.
You can filter the escalation list by status and search by customer or summary to find specific handoffs.
What's next
- Connect more places customers reach you in channels.
- Make sure your agent has the content it needs before it escalates - see train Lyro on your content.
- Read the complete escalation reference for every option and behavior.