Inbox — Managing Escalations
Claim, respond to, and resolve customer escalations that the AI couldn't handle.
The Inbox is where your team handles live customer escalations — conversations the AI agent wasn't able to resolve and handed off to a human.
What is an escalation?
An escalation is created when:
- The AI's confidence falls below the threshold for a given query
- A customer explicitly asks to speak to a human
- A trigger keyword (configured in settings) appears in the conversation
When an escalation is created, the session is paused and routed to your Inbox. The customer sees a message like "I'm connecting you with a team member."
Opening the Inbox
Click Inbox in the left sidebar. You'll see a list of escalations filterable by status.
Escalation statuses
| Status | Meaning |
|---|---|
pending |
New escalation — no agent has claimed it yet |
claimed |
An agent has taken ownership and is actively working it |
resolved |
The issue was addressed and the session was closed successfully |
closed |
The escalation was closed without full resolution (e.g. customer left) |
Claiming an escalation
- Click any Pending escalation.
- Click Claim to take ownership. The status changes to Claimed and the escalation is assigned to you.
- Read the conversation history in the main panel to understand the context.
Note: Only one agent should claim an escalation. Claiming prevents two agents from responding simultaneously.
Reading the conversation
The conversation panel shows every message in chronological order with speaker labels:
- Customer — Messages from the end user
- AI — Automated responses from the Panacea agent
- Agent — Messages from your team members
- System — Automated events (e.g. "Escalation created", "Agent claimed")
The sidebar shows the customer's full session history — all past conversations they've had, so you have context before you reply.
Sending a reply
- Type your message in the reply box at the bottom of the conversation panel.
- Press Send or hit Enter.
- Your message appears in the conversation and is delivered to the customer via the chat widget on their page.
Resolving, handing back, or closing
Once you've addressed the customer's issue:
- Click Resolve — marks the escalation as resolved. The customer's session ends gracefully.
- Click Hand back to AI — returns the session to the AI agent (if the customer's question is now answerable from the wiki).
- Click Close — closes the escalation without a resolution message (use for spam, abandoned sessions, etc.)
Tips
- Respond within 2 minutes — Customers escalated to a human expect fast responses. Slow responses erode trust.
- Check the session history — The sidebar shows what the customer tried before. Don't ask them to repeat themselves.
- After resolving, update the wiki — If you answered a question the AI couldn't, that answer belongs in your wiki. Go to Ingest, paste the Q&A, and compile it.
- Use the Query playground to test — After adding to the wiki, test the same question in the Query playground to confirm the AI can now handle it.