Stylo Docs

Define conditions where a workflow should not respond and instead flag the ticket for human review.

Escalation rules are guardrails that prevent a workflow from responding when a human needs to be involved. They're evaluated before the AI generates a response — if any rule matches, the workflow stops and the ticket is flagged for agent review.

Why escalation rules matter

Even the best-configured workflow shouldn't handle every situation. Escalation rules give you confidence that automated responses won't be sent in cases where:

The financial stakes are too high (large orders, high-value customers)
The situation requires specialized knowledge (legal, technical, compliance)
The data indicates something unusual (disputed transactions, fraud signals)
Company policy requires human review for specific scenarios

How they work

Escalation rules are checked against the data fetched by your workflow's connected tools (e.g., Shopify order data). Each rule defines:

Field — what data to check (e.g., order total, fulfillment status)
Condition — how to evaluate it (equals, greater than, contains, etc.)
Reason — why this should escalate (logged for visibility)

Rules are evaluated in order. If any rule matches, the workflow stops immediately — the AI is never called, and the response is never generated.

Available conditions

Condition	What it checks	Example
Equals	Field matches an exact value	Financial status equals "disputed"
Not equals	Field does not match a value	Status not equals "delivered"
Contains	Field contains a substring	Customer notes contain "VIP"
Greater than	Field is above a numeric threshold	Order total greater than 500
Less than	Field is below a numeric threshold	Order total less than 0 (refunded)
Is missing	Field is not present in the data	Tracking number is missing

Common escalation rules

By order value

Escalate high-value orders to ensure a human reviews the response:

Field	Condition	Value	Reason
Order total	Greater than	500	High-value order requires human review

By financial status

Prevent automated responses for disputed or potentially fraudulent orders:

Field	Condition	Value	Reason
Financial status	Equals	disputed	Disputed orders require human review
Financial status	Equals	refunded	Already refunded — agent should verify

By missing data

Escalate when the workflow can't find the data it needs to respond:

Field	Condition	Value	Reason
Order number	Is missing	—	Cannot find order for this customer

What happens when a rule triggers

When an escalation rule matches:

The workflow execution stops — no response is generated
The execution is recorded with status "escalation triggered" and the rule's reason
If background automation is enabled, an "escalated" tag is added to the ticket so agents can filter and prioritize
The ticket remains in the queue for an agent to handle manually

Escalation is visible in the workflow's execution history, so you can track how often each rule fires and adjust thresholds over time.

Tips

Start conservative. It's better to escalate too often at first and reduce thresholds as you build confidence. A missed escalation is worse than an unnecessary one.
Combine with "when to use" rules. Escalation rules check data after tool data is fetched. If you want to prevent the workflow from running entirely based on ticket attributes (tags, status, channel), use conditions in the workflow's activation settings instead.
Review escalation frequency. If a rule fires on more than 30-40% of tickets, the workflow's "when to use" description may need tightening — it's matching tickets it shouldn't be handling at all.

Escalation Rules