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Escalations: when the assistant hands off to you

The assistant is designed to handle most customer interactions automatically. However, when a situation requires personal attention, the assistant escalates the conversation and hands it off to your team.

There are two types of escalations: conversation-level escalations for team members staffing the Inbox, and account-level escalations for account admins regarding system health.

Conversation escalations

The assistant triggers a conversation escalation when it determines that a human operator is needed. This occurs when:

• A customer explicitly asks to speak to a person.
• The assistant is unable to answer or help with the customer's request.
• The system encounters payment or sending issues when replying to that specific customer.

What happens during an escalation

When a conversation escalates, Yapper automatically performs the following actions:

1. Pauses auto-replies: The assistant stops sending automatic replies to that customer so you can take over the conversation without interruption.
2. Grants access: The resolved team members are automatically granted access to the conversation, making it immediately visible in their Inbox.
3. Marks the conversation: An internal, team-only message is appended to the conversation history, and the conversation is flagged with an escalation badge and pinned to the top of the Inbox list.
4. Sends notifications: Yapper sends alerts to the assigned team members using their configured delivery methods. No automated messages are sent to the customer about the escalation itself.

Who receives conversation alerts

When a conversation escalates, Yapper routes notifications to team members using this fallback order:

1. Dedicated escalation team members configured for the sender.
2. Default team members assigned to the sender.
3. All account admins (if no specific users are assigned).

Account-level health escalations

If there is a system-wide or configuration issue that prevents the assistant from working correctly, Yapper notifies account admins. These faults do not pause individual customer conversations or flag them as escalated, but instead alert admins to issues they need to resolve.

These health alerts cover:

• Provider and configuration issues: Invalid provider keys, missing keys, or exhausted credits (if you manage your own keys).
• WhatsApp and Meta blocks: Blocked WhatsApp Business Accounts, payment method failures on Meta, or official Meta account alerts.

Notification timing and frequency

To prevent spamming admins with temporary network blips, Yapper uses a notification policy:

• Critical blocks: Meta blocks, payment issues, or account alerts trigger notifications immediately on the first occurrence.
• Actionable faults: Invalid keys or out-of-credit issues notify admins after three consecutive failures, re-notifying at most every four hours.
• Sustained outages: Temporary system outages page admins after three consecutive failures and at least 15 minutes of continuous failure, re-notifying at most every 12 hours.

Once a successful message is sent or the issue is fixed, the account health warning clears automatically.

Setting up notifications

Each team member can customize how they want to receive escalation alerts.

Configuring contact methods

In the dashboard under your user settings, you can manage your notification contacts. Supported channels include:

• Login email: The default address you use to sign into the dashboard.
• Custom email: A dedicated email address for alerts.
• WhatsApp: A mobile phone number to receive alerts via WhatsApp.

If you leave these settings empty, notifications default to your login email. You can also disable alerts entirely by clearing your contact list.

For WhatsApp notifications, Yapper sends a pre-approved template containing the customer name, the sender name, the escalation reason, and a direct link to the Inbox. The system automatically matches the message language to your preferred locale, falling back to English if it is not supported.

Resolving escalations

An escalation remains active until a team member takes action. The escalation status and badge clear when:

• A team member sends a new reply to the customer from the Inbox.
• A team member manually sends a template message from the dashboard.
• A team member manually unpauses the assistant for that conversation in the dashboard.

Escalations are not cleared by automated follow-ups or scheduled messages.

If the same conversation experiences another issue after being resolved, the assistant will trigger a new escalation and notify your team again.