Escalation

Escalation moves a ticket from "bot is handling it" to "a human needs to step in."

How users escalate

Every ticket message area includes a Request human button. When clicked:

• The ticket is flagged for staff attention.
• Depending on your setup, staff may be notified in the staff-review channel or by direct mentions.
• Thoth will stop trying to answer until staff engage.

Automatic escalation

Thoth escalates on its own when:

• It cannot find a sufficiently confident answer in your knowledge base.
• The conversation indicates a human-only action (refunds, account changes, sensitive issues, etc.).
• You have configured behavior that requires a human for certain signals.

Escalated tickets remain in the same private channel. Staff reply there directly.

Staff reply behavior

Once any staff member sends a message in a ticket, Thoth pauses before replying again (30 minutes by default).

Change this in Settings → Staff reply cooldown:

• A positive number (for example 15 or 30) — wait that many minutes after a staff message.
• 0 — disable the time-based pause. Thoth will still avoid talking over active staff conversation using other signals.

This prevents the bot from talking over your team while they are helping.

Where staff see escalations

• The ticket channel itself (always).
• The staff-review management channel created by /thoth autoconfig, if you use it as a queue.
• Direct pings or role mentions, if you configure them.

After escalation

Staff handle the ticket to resolution and run /close when done. The normal close flow (rating DM, transcript, possible tip) still applies.

See How tickets work for the full lifecycle and Auto-learn for what happens to useful resolutions.