Use this article to configure when and how Fin AI Agent escalates conversations to your team. You'll learn how to set up Escalation Rules (data-driven triggers), write Escalation Guidance (natural language instructions), use workflows to control post-escalation routing, and monitor escalation metrics to optimize Fin's performance.
Fin escalation behavior is powered by:
Default escalation behavior
Escalation Rules (data-driven)
Escalation Guidance (natural language)
Workflows (post-escalation routing and actions)
Each section below is self-contained — jump to the method you want to configure, or read through from the top for a full overview.
Note: Configuring Escalation Rules and Escalation Guidance requires access to Fin AI Agent settings. Navigate to Train > Escalations. If you don't see this option, check with your workspace admin about your access level.
How Fin escalates by default
Out of the box, Fin is already designed to escalate in several key scenarios:
When a customer clearly asks to speak to a human.
When Fin detects strong frustration or anger.
When the customer is stuck in a repetitive loop.
You can add Escalation Rules and Escalation Guidance on top of this default behavior to gain more precise control.
Note: Escalation Guidance and Escalation Rules will override Fin’s default behavior.
When Fin offers to escalate
In some cases, Fin sends a message offering escalation instead of escalating immediately.
Example offer message:
“I understand this is causing frustration. Would you like to speak with a human teammate, or would you prefer to continue working with me?”
Fin offers escalation when:
How: The customer asks how to contact support.
Anger: The customer is upset or showing frustration.
Keyword: The customer says “agent” or “support” without clarity.
Loop: The customer repeats themselves across three turns.
First-turn escalation: The customer tries to escalate immediately after Fin introduces itself.
Note: Fin will only offer escalation once per conversation.
When Fin escalates immediately
Fin escalates directly when:
Direct request: The customer clearly asks for a human.
Escalation Guidance or Escalation Rule: Explicitly instruct Fin to escalate.
Guidance can also explicitly prevent escalation or require more information first.
When escalation offers don’t appear
Escalation offers are skipped when:
No human support is available: Your workflow ends without assigning to a teammate/inbox.
Phone requests: Phone is a separate channel.
Previous offer: Fin has already offered escalation.
How to configure escalation
Fin supports two escalation configuration methods, each designed for different use cases.
Escalation Rules
Escalation Rules trigger a handoff to your team when defined data attributes are detected in a conversation. It’s perfect for situations where you have structured data about your customers or the conversation itself.
For example, you could set up a rule to automatically escalate a conversation if:
The detected value for the Fin attribute "Sentiment" is "Negative".
The detected value for the Fin attribute "Issue Type" is "Bug".
The conversation data contains an order total over a certain value.
A custom data attribute like "VIP_customer" is true.
Tip: You can view and manage Fin attributes, like "Sentiment" and "Topic", by navigating to Train > Attributes.
To create an Escalation Rule:
Navigate to the Train > Escalations.
Click + New under Escalation Rules, add a condition to define the triggers for the escalation. These conditions can be based on Users, Company, or other conversation data.
Click the Audience dropdown and select who this rule applies to (e.g., "VIP customers" or "EU audience"). By default, "Everyone" is selected.
Once you’ve configured your conditions, click Save and Enable. The rule activates immediately and applies to all new conversations that match the defined conditions. Existing open conversations are not affected. The rule is listed as Active on the Escalations page once enabled.
Pro tip: To safely test a new rule before it affects all customers:
Add a condition to the rule that targets only your team (e.g.,
Email contains "@yourcompany.com").Click Save and Enable.
Go to the Preview window on the right and set the "Testing as" user to an email that matches your condition (e.g.,
your-email@yourcompany.com).Type a message that should trigger the rule and check the Event log tab. You'll see a confirmation that your rule was correctly followed.
Once you've confirmed it works, you can remove the email condition to activate the rule for all customers.
Escalation Guidance
This method triggers an escalation using natural language scenarios or customer behaviors. This is ideal for responding to a customer's intent or actions when specific data attributes aren't available.
For example, you could set up a scenario based rule to automatically escalate a conversation if a customer:
Uses words that indicate frustration, like “angry” or “not working”.
Asks to speak directly with a human teammate.
Repeatedly visits your pricing or cancellation page.
To create Escalation Guidance:
Navigate to Train > Escalations.
Click + New under Escalation Guidance, add fine-tune Fin’s escalation behaviour in specific scenarios using natural language.
Click the Audience dropdown and select who this rule applies to (e.g., "VIP customers" or "EU audience"). By default, "Everyone" is selected.
Once you’ve written your guidance, click Save and Enable. The guidance activates immediately and applies to new conversations. Confirm it is listed as Active on the Escalations page.
When an Escalation Guidance is applied:
When a guidance rule is matched, Fin receives it as an instruction for that conversation turn.
Fin’s response can explain why it is escalating or why it isn’t.
Only one guidance rule is applied per conversation. If multiple rules match, Fin applies the first matching rule in priority order. Review and reorder rules at Train > Escalations to control which rule takes precedence.
Tip: For advice on writing clear and effective guidance, check out our Fin Guidance best practices article.
Escalation Guidance examples
Moments when Fin should escalate customers straight to your team.
Be extra sensitive to customer frustration - if the customer expresses irritation, disappointment, or uses words like 'ridiculous' or 'waste of time' escalate immediately.
If a customer asks to speak with a human, offer to connect them to a support agent rather than escalating immediately.
Offer to escalate the customer to a human agent if they ask the same question twice.
If the customer mentions a competitor's name, escalate to a human agent and let them know you're connecting them with a team member who can better assist.
If a customer asks for personalized advice on a sensitive topic — such as dosing, medical, legal, or financial guidance — escalate immediately to a human teammate rather than letting Fin attempt to answer.
Note: You can have up to 100 active guidance rules at a time. If you try to activate more, you'll see an 'invalid parameters' error. To fix this, combine similar rules or pause ones you don't need before activating new ones.
How to use escalation in workflows
Escalation Rules and Guidance decide when escalation happens. Workflows decide what happens next.
To make it easy for you to configure routing and handover behavior when Fin escalates a conversation to the team, you can create branches in workflows based on which Escalation has been applied. This gives you full control of how Fin escalates to the team for specific scenarios.
Simply create a branch in your workflow for each type of escalation, and combine it with other filters like customer type or language for even more control.
To set this up:
Create your escalation guidance in Train > Escalation.
Then go to Deploy, open your Fin workflow, and add a Branches step after the Let Fin answer step (the step that lets Fin handle the conversation before any handoff).
Choose Escalation as your condition.
Select the escalation guidance you want to branch on (e.g., “Refund requests”).
Assign each branch to the right action in your workflow.
While Escalation Rules and Guidance handle the detection and initiation of escalations, your Fin workflow is used to manage the steps that follow the escalation.
For example:
Escalation Rule/Guidance: Specify when and why escalation should occur.
Workflow: Handle post-escalation actions such as collecting additional information from the customer, creating a ticket, or routing the issue to the appropriate team.
This separation ensures that the escalation process is both efficient and customizable for your needs.
Tip: If you want to measure how often escalations are triggered by configuration, use Fin AI Agent configuration based escalation metric and filter by configuration based escalation reason (for example, “Guidance applied” or “Escalation rule applied”).
How to reduce unnecessary escalations
To improve Fin's efficiency and free up your team, you can take steps to reduce the number of conversations that get escalated unnecessarily.
Use Escalation Guidance only when necessary
Escalation Guidance is powerful, but broad or generic guidance can cause a sharp increase in escalations and a corresponding drop in Fin resolution rate.
The more escalation guidance you add, the more often Fin escalates.
Broader guidance leads to more escalations, fewer resolutions, and higher human support volume.
Most customers accept escalation offers when presented, even if Fin could have resolved the issue.
For best results:
Write escalation guidance for the narrowest possible situations where human support is truly required.
Avoid generic instructions like “escalate if the customer is upset” unless escalation is always the correct outcome.
Prefer asking for clarification or deflecting first when frustration can still be resolved by Fin.
Use escalation offers sparingly, as they often result in a handover even when unnecessary.
Improve your knowledge base
Improve and expand your knowledge base.
Use Analyze to identify knowledge gaps and opportunities for better automation.
How to monitor escalation metrics
To understand Fin's performance and diagnose where it may need adjustment, you should regularly monitor key metrics.
Escalated conversations
Fin AI Agent escalated conversations: This metric shows the total number of conversations Fin handed over to a human.
Escalation rate
Fin AI Agent escalation rate: The percentage of total Fin conversations that resulted in an escalation.
Configuration based escalation reason
Fin AI Agent: Configuration based escalation reason: A granular attribute that identifies exactly why Fin escalated, such as Guidance applied, Escalation rule applied, Custom answer ending type (when a Custom Answer — a specific trained reply Fin uses for particular questions — ended the conversation), or Fin in one time mode (when Fin is configured to handle only a single reply before handing off).
Escalated reason and escalated by
Fin AI Agent escalated reason: Shows the specific reason for each escalation across 14 possible values in Fin AI Agent reporting — including User requested, User is frustrated, Escalation rule applied, Workspace guidance applied, Custom tool error, Voice escalation, and more. Use this to break escalations down by reason and track trends over time.
Fin AI Agent escalated by: Shows which entity triggered the escalation — such as a specific Procedure, Guidance rule, Escalation Rule, Custom Answer, or Data Connector. Use this to pinpoint the exact source of each escalation.
You can find these metrics in Intercom by navigating to Reports > Custom Reports and creating or opening a report that uses the Fin AI Agent dataset. Analyzing these metrics helps you identify trends and adjust your escalation guidance or knowledge base accordingly.
FAQs
Can escalation guidance stop Fin from escalating?
Can escalation guidance stop Fin from escalating?
Yes. Guidance can explicitly prevent escalation or require additional steps first.
Does escalation guidance affect what Fin says?
Does escalation guidance affect what Fin says?
Yes. Applied guidance now influences Fin’s replies and send-off messages.
What should I do if Fin refuses to answer questions about my products or services?
What should I do if Fin refuses to answer questions about my products or services?
Fin has built-in safety guardrails that prevent it from providing certain types of personalized advice — for example, medical dosing recommendations, financial guidance, or legal counsel. This behavior is by design and can't be disabled.
If your business operates in a sensitive industry (for example, health supplements, or financial services) and customers regularly ask questions that fall into these restricted categories, the recommended approach is to set up Escalation Guidance to route those questions directly to a human teammate — rather than letting Fin try and refuse.
Example guidance: "If a customer asks for personalized dosing or medical advice, escalate immediately to a human teammate."
Note: Make sure human teammates are available (or office hours are configured) so that escalated conversations get picked up. If no teammate is online, customers will get a refusal from Fin with no fallback.
Can I use escalation guidance or escalation rules to specify where Fin should escalate a conversation?
Can I use escalation guidance or escalation rules to specify where Fin should escalate a conversation?
No. Escalation guidance and escalation rules can’t be used to tell Fin where to escalate a conversation (e.g. which teammate or inbox). For example, you can’t create escalation guidance that tells Fin to escalate to the Sales team.
Instead, conversation assignment happens after Fin has escalated the conversation and will follow the rules you've set up in your helpdesk (e.g. Zendesk).
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