Adapt this guidance to your policies, Cloud plan, identity model, channels, provider accounts and legal requirements. Validate every production change in a controlled workspace.
Prerequisites
Collect these decisions and controls before beginning the workflow.
- A named owner for the workflow and the authority to approve customer-impacting changes.
- A non-production workspace or controlled test scope with safe sample data.
- Current channel, identity, retention, access and escalation requirements.
- A rollback or disable path if acceptance criteria are not met.
Separate the interaction models
Live chat connects a person; a scripted bot follows predefined paths; an AI agent generates answers from knowledge and policy.
Classify customer risk
Use people for sensitive, high-value or ambiguous topics and automation for repetitive, well-governed questions.
Measure resolution, not deflection
A contained conversation is useful only when the customer received an accurate answer or clear next step.
Design visible handoff
Let customers request a person and transfer context without making them repeat the issue.
Implementation checklist
- Record the current state, target outcome and measurable acceptance criteria.
- Configure the minimum viable workflow before adding automation or provider complexity.
- Test customer, agent, manager and failure experiences end to end.
- Document ownership, monitoring, review cadence and escalation contacts.
- Recheck the workflow after product, provider, policy or team changes.
Troubleshooting and recovery
The configured result differs from the documented workflow
Return to the smallest reproducible scope, compare current configuration with prerequisites and inspect the latest change.
The workflow works only for administrators
Review roles, site scope, provider permissions and object ownership using a non-administrator test account.
Customers receive duplicate or delayed outcomes
Inspect idempotency, provider delivery attempts, queue retries, threading and automation overlap.
A provider or channel becomes unavailable
Use the documented fallback, pause unsafe automation and communicate ownership until service is restored.