Escalation & Handoff

Not every request belongs in a chatbot. When the customer’s question is too complex, too sensitive, or simply outside the agent’s scope, Omniflow detects it and proposes the right alternative — without making the customer repeat themselves.

The three handoff paths

Omniflow ships with three first-class escalation outcomes. The agent picks based on the conversation, the customer’s preference, and your routing rules.

How detection works

The agent uses three signals to decide it should propose an alternative path:

1. Confidence on retrieval. When knowledge retrieval returns no chunk above the configured threshold, the agent doesn’t guess — it offers handoff.
2. Intent classification. Built-in detectors flag conversations that are out-of-scope, mention legal/medical/financial advice, or contain emotional cues like frustration.
3. Explicit rules. Tagged keywords (refund, cancel, manager, complaint) or routing conditions can force a specific handoff path.

The conversation pattern

A typical flow:

Customer: “I want to change the beneficiary on my life insurance policy.”

Agent: (retrieval returns the policy doc but it’s a sensitive change requiring identity verification) “That’s a change I want to make sure we get exactly right. I can offer three options:

1. Fill out the secure update form I’ll send you — takes about two minutes.
2. Talk to a licensed agent right now if you’d prefer — average wait is six minutes.
3. Schedule a callback at a time that works for you — next available is 2:00 PM today.

Which works best?”

The customer picks. The agent executes:

• Option 1 — calls the send_secure_form tool, which generates a signed magic link to a pre-filled form. Conversation stays open in case the customer has questions.
• Option 2 — calls transfer_to_human with the conversation context, the customer’s intent, and the data gathered so far. The human agent picks up with full history.
• Option 3 — calls schedule_callback, picks a slot from the team’s calendar integration, sends confirmations. The conversation closes with a confirmation message.

Self-service form handoff

How it works:

1. The agent has gathered partial data through the chat (“name”, “policy number”, “new beneficiary’s name”).
2. The agent calls send_secure_form(template_id, prefilled_data, return_url).
3. Omniflow generates a signed, time-limited URL pointing to your form host (your CRM portal, your Salesforce community, a custom React page, or Omniflow’s hosted form).
4. The customer fills in the rest — including any sensitive fields the chatbot shouldn’t see.
5. On submit, your backend processes the change; an event posts back to the conversation as an internal note.

Templates live under Settings → Forms. Each template defines the fields, validation, and target URL.

Live agent handover

The transfer is “warm” — the human picks up with everything the bot saw:

• Full transcript of the chatbot conversation.
• The intent the bot detected.
• Any data the bot gathered (name, policy ID, etc.).
• The customer’s mood / sentiment as scored by the bot.
• The customer’s CRM record.

See Routing Rules for the full configuration model.

Scheduled callback

The callback flow uses your team’s calendar integration:

1. The agent calls propose_callback_slots(customer_id, channel="voice"|"chat", duration=15).
2. Omniflow checks the team’s availability and offers up to 3 slots.
3. The customer picks one.
4. The slot is booked on the team’s calendar and the customer’s calendar (if connected).
5. A reminder fires 15 minutes before the callback.
6. At the scheduled time, the system creates a callback task on the assigned agent’s queue with the original conversation context.

Set it up

When you encounter a request that is sensitive, complex, or outside
your competence, do NOT guess or invent a policy. Instead offer the
customer one of three paths:
  1. A self-service form for routine but structured changes.
  2. A live agent for sensitive or judgment-heavy requests.
  3. A scheduled callback for after-hours or research-heavy requests.
Always present all three; let the customer choose.

Compliance and audit

Every handoff is logged:

• Which path was offered.
• Which path the customer picked.
• The full conversation context handed off.
• Time-to-pickup for live handover.
• Callback fulfillment rate.

Use the Handoff report under Reports & Trends to track patterns — high handoff rate on a specific topic usually means a knowledge gap or a process issue.

Open in Omniflow

• Open Routing rules
• Open Forms settings
• Open Teams

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