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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:

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. This message is written in your account language, whatever language the conversation itself is in, because your team is the only audience for it.
  4. Sends notifications: Yapper sends alerts to the assigned team members using their configured delivery methods.
  5. Acknowledges the customer: When the assistant itself decides a human is needed, the customer receives a short automatic holding note — in the sender's language — letting them know someone from the team will follow up, so they are not left waiting in silence. Escalations caused by payment or sending issues do not message the customer.

When a reply could not be generated

If the assistant keeps failing to produce a reply to a customer message — for example during a sustained outage of the AI provider — Yapper stops retrying that message, adds a team-only note to the conversation saying the automated reply could not be generated, and flags it so it stands out in the Inbox. This flag does not pause auto-replies: the assistant keeps answering new messages, and the flag clears on its next successful reply. The customer's unanswered message still needs a reply from your team. Account admins are alerted through the sustained-outage health alert described below rather than once per conversation.

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:

Billing alerts are separate from these account-health alerts. For a failed subscription renewal, Paddle emails the workspace owner and handles payment retries. If an auto-recharge payment is declined, Yapper emails account admins; if the prepaid balance reaches zero, AI replies pause and Yapper emails account admins with instructions to add credits.

Undeliverable escalation contacts

If an escalation alert or account health alert to a team member's WhatsApp number or email can't be delivered, that person is silently missing their handoff notifications. When this happens, all account admins are notified — over their own contact methods, and their login email as a fallback — and a banner appears in the dashboard naming the affected team member. The banner stays until the problem is fixed: either the team member's notification contacts are updated in Team settings, or a later alert to that contact is delivered successfully. Because a customer may be waiting for a human who isn't being alerted, this notification is sent immediately on the first failed delivery.

Notification timing and frequency

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

Reminders for the same unresolved issue arrive progressively less often — the gap between them grows each time, up to about once a week — so an issue that stays broken keeps reminding you without flooding your inbox. The warning banner also stays in the dashboard until the issue is fixed.

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:

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:

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.