Skip to main content

Human Escalation

Human escalation lets an agent hand a call or message to a person on your team when it should not handle it alone, for example when a caller asks for a person or a request falls outside what the agent is allowed to do. The person picks the conversation up in the workspace app, the app your team uses to take escalated work. See Human escalation in the key terms.

Human escalation is off in a new environment, and agents work on their own until you turn it on. It runs on your Twilio account, using TaskRouter, Twilio's routing engine that matches each piece of work to a person who is free to take it. See Twilio's TaskRouter docs.

How a Handover Works​

  1. The agent decides the conversation needs a person and hands it over.
  2. The handover becomes a task in Twilio, a single piece of work such as one call or one chat.
  3. The workflow decides which task queue the task goes into.
  4. The task queue offers the task to someone who is eligible and available.
  5. That person accepts it in the workspace app and takes over the conversation.
  6. When they finish, they wrap up the contact, choosing a wrap-up code and adding notes if your setup asks for them.

Each step has a settings page: the workflow and task queues are on Routing, how many tasks one person can hold at once is on Capacity, and wrapping up is on Wrap.

Before You Start​

  • Role: the Organisation Admin role.
  • Twilio connected for this environment. See Twilio.
  • A Twilio API key, and a TaskRouter workspace and workflow in your Twilio account. These are entered on Twilio Resources after you turn human escalation on.
  • People to take the work, who will sign in to the workspace app. See Workspace.

Turning On Human Escalation​

  1. Open Settings.
  2. Under Contact Centre, select Human Escalation.
  3. Select Set Up Human Escalation.

The Contact Centre group in the sidebar changes to show four pages, and you land on Twilio Resources. If it cannot be turned on, a message says "Human escalation couldn't be turned on. Try again."

Turning it on does not send any calls to people by itself. Work only reaches your team once the Twilio resources are entered, the webhook URLs are pushed and routing is set up.

Setting It Up​

Work through the pages in this order. Each one links to the next thing it depends on.

  1. Twilio Resources: add the API key and the TaskRouter, voice and messaging resources, then push the four webhook URLs.
  2. Routing: check that at least one activity is marked Available, that there is a task queue, and that the workflow sends tasks to it.
  3. Capacity: set how many voice and chat tasks one person can hold at the same time.
  4. Wrap: decide whether wrap-up is required, and add the wrap-up codes your team chooses from.
  5. The workspace app: ask the people who will take escalated work to sign in. Wrap and capacity settings only reach people once they have signed in.

The Getting started checklist in the Agentic sidebar follows the same path. Its human escalation row moves from Add Human Escalation to Finish Human Escalation (Twilio needs connecting first), then Point Twilio Back at Us (the webhook URLs need pushing), and finally Human Escalation Ready. See Getting Started.

Turning Off Human Escalation​

  1. Open Settings > Twilio Resources.
  2. In the Human Escalation section, switch Status to Off.
  3. Select Save changes.

Turning it off hides the Twilio Resources, Wrap, Routing and Capacity pages and takes you back to the Human Escalation page. Everything you saved on those pages is kept, so turning it back on later picks up where you left off.

What Happens Next​

In This Section​

  • Twilio Resources. The API key, TaskRouter resources and webhook URLs
  • Wrap. After-contact work and wrap-up codes
  • Routing. Activities, task queues and the workflow
  • Capacity. How many tasks one person can hold at once