Settings · AI & Alerts
Escalations
Escalations decides who on your team hears about it when your AI assistant hands a conversation to a person: billing questions to one inbox, service questions to another, job applications to a third.
Quick Answer - 30 Seconds
To route escalations: Account settings → AI & Alerts → Escalations → in the Escalation contacts card, type an email address, a phone number or a webhook URL under each topic and press Enter → done. Rows save themselves.
Every hand-off that reaches your team becomes a task for your team, even when a topic is empty. The lists decide who hears about it.
What this controls
Your AI assistant hands a conversation off when it cannot finish it: a price quote it must not give, a complaint, a billing question, or a customer who asks for a person.
Each hand-off that reaches your team does two things:
- It becomes a task for your team in Human Force, your team's task list at app.onepath.ai/human_force.
- Everyone on the topic's list hears about it. Email addresses get a Task for Your Team email with an Open the task button, phone numbers get a text, and webhook URLs get a JSON POST. If the list has no email address, your legal contact email gets the email instead.
| Row | Hint in the app | Hand-offs that land here |
|---|---|---|
| Billing escalation | billing questions, payment problems, refunds | Billing questions |
| Service escalation | jobs too complex or technical for the CSR to solve | Complaints, urgent requests, reschedules, cancellations, callbacks, price quotes, services you don't offer, customers you can't serve |
| Recruiting escalation | job applications and questions about working here | Job applications (see below) |
| Other escalation | complaints, unknown questions — anything unclassified | The customer wants a person, property-owner checks, conversations the assistant couldn't finish, anything else |
The Other escalation hint mentions complaints, but complaints go to Service escalation. Put whoever handles complaints on that list.
If OnePath's agents also work hand-offs for you, they take what they can. Billing, price quotes, services you don't offer, customers you can't serve and job applications always come to your team. So does a conversation your team already holds.
Job applications
When someone asks about working for you ("are you hiring technicians?"), or fills in a hiring form such as a "Now Hiring" Facebook form, your AI assistant treats them as an applicant, not a customer:
- It asks for the role they want, their experience, the area they can work in, and their name and phone number. It doesn't ask again what the form already said.
- It hands them to Recruiting escalation as a Job Application task and thanks them. If they write again, the message reaches that task.
- It never promises a job, an interview, a call-back time or pay, and never asks for a resume. If they ask where to send one, it gives them your Recruiting escalation email address. The assistant never gives that address to customers.
- No lead is opened for an applicant, and the Dashboard lists them under Needs a look, not as job requests.
If your account existed before the Recruiting row was added, the row starts with your Other escalation contacts, so applications keep reaching the same people. Change it any time.
The email addresses on Service escalation also get OnePath's alerts about your setup: no availability found for a booking, field service mappings that are broken or have no capacity, lead sources that are not mapped yet, and webhooks that stop accepting notifications.
Where to find it
Location: Account settings → AI & Alerts → Escalations
→ app.onepath.ai/settings/account/escalations
Only Company Owners and Account Admins can open this page.
Escalation contacts
The card Escalation contacts has the four rows above. Each row has one field, Add email, phone or webhook URL. OnePath reads what you type and decides how to reach it:
| You type | OnePath reads it as | What it sends |
|---|---|---|
Anything with an @, like service@example.com | A Task for Your Team email | |
A US or Canadian number, like (512) 555-0142 | Phone | A text message with a summary and a link to the task |
A web address starting with http:// or https:// | Webhook | A JSON POST to your system |
- Find the topic.
- Type the contact and press Enter. It becomes a chip. Repeat for more people or systems.
- Wait for Escalation policy updated successfully. There is no Save or Done button.
To remove a contact, click the × on their chip. A phone number from outside the US and Canada cannot be texted, so the page refuses to save until you remove it.
Texts go out from your OnePath number, which you pick under Voice & RCS Text Messaging. From 7 AM to 9 PM in your account's time zone, a text goes out right away. Overnight, it waits until 7 AM.
Webhooks fire task.handed_to_account. Send your developer Webhook events. This page has no test button.
What happens if a topic has no email address
The email goes to your account's legal contact email instead, even if the topic has a phone number or a webhook. If that is blank too, nobody is emailed. The task still waits on your team's task list, but nobody may know to look.
When a caller needs a person
This card sets what your AI assistant promises on a phone call. When a caller insists on a person, has a complaint or asks about billing, it escalates to the office and promises a call back. It still books the job when the caller is bookable.
| Choice in the sentence | Options |
|---|---|
| The call back the assistant promises | within 1 business hour (the default), within 2 business hours, within 4 business hours, by the end of the business day, by the end of the next business day |
| How it asks to reach the caller | this number or another number (the default), on the number they called from |
| The number calls are put through to | A direct office line. During business hours, a caller who still insists on a person is put through to it, and it hears who is calling before it connects. Leave it blank to always take a message. |
The escalation waits in Interactions › Call back until someone marks it called back. If the promised time passes first, the Call back overdue event on Notifications fires.
Book customers marked Do Not Service
A single switch below the cards. Off by default.
When your field service software marks a customer Do Not Service or inactive, the assistant normally hands them to Service escalation instead of booking. Switch this on to let it book them anyway. It only turns on if Service escalation has at least one email address; a phone number or a webhook does not count. Otherwise you see cannot be enabled without at least one 'Service' escalation policy recipient.
The emails your team gets
Task for Your Team, one per hand-off, to each email address on the topic's list. Subject: Task for Your Team - Task #[number] - [customer name] - [time]. It shows:
- What they need: why the conversation was handed to you.
- Why it reached you, when the requested service is set to always reach a person, or is not fully set up to be booked. The second comes with Finish the service settings →.
- Task summary, when there is one.
- How to reach them: the contact the customer asked for, or their latest phone and email.
- Open the task to work it, and View conversation → to read the chat first.
- Reply in Yelp →, for Yelp leads with no direct contact yet.
Customer Wrote Again, when the customer writes again on a task your team holds and nobody has it open. It goes to the same list as the task, once the customer has been quiet for 10 minutes, and shows what they wrote. Subject: Customer Wrote Again - Task #[number] - [customer name] - [time].
Morning and end-of-day summaries, when you open and an hour before you close, on the days you're open, while any task waits. Each list gets its own summary about its own tasks. It lists the customers who wrote again, the ones nobody has written to yet, and under Looks solved the tasks where a visit was booked after the hand-off. Open the list takes you to the task list. No tasks waiting, no email. See Emails You Get.
Escalation emails reach a person even when Notifications are off.
Working the task
Click Open the task in the email, or Open the task on the conversation in Interactions. Human Force has no link in the top bar; bookmark app.onepath.ai/human_force to reach the list directly.
While the task sits on your team's list or someone works it, your AI assistant stops following up. The customer's replies show up on the task. If someone parks the task with Remind me…, the follow-ups reach the customer again until it comes back.
How to take, work and close a task: Your Team's Task List and First Task Walkthrough.
Quick Tips
- ✅ Put an email address on every topic - without one, the email falls back to your legal contact, or tells nobody.
- ✅ Use team inboxes -
billing@andservice@outlive any one person. - ✅ Add a backup - a second contact means nothing waits while someone is out.
- ✅ Close tasks that look solved - the summary emails keep counting them until you do.
- ❌ Don't rely on the fallback - the legal contact email is not always monitored.
Related
- Appointment and call alerts: Notifications.
- The same lists during setup: Escalations & notifications during setup.