Automation rules

What rules do

Not every customer should be treated the same, and not every question should be answered by AI. The rule engine is where you encode both. Each rule has a condition and an action, written in plain language, and you can change them yourself in minutes. Rules are checked before Fidiora tries to answer, which is what makes them the backbone of human in the loop.

Conditions and actions

Conditions describe who the customer is and what they are asking. Actions describe what should happen.

• Customer conditions. Plan (free or paid), region, account value, VIP status.
• Conversation conditions. Topic or intent, such as billing, security, or buying intent.
• Route. Send the conversation to a specific team or pipeline stage.
• Prioritize. Move it ahead in the queue.
• Hand off to a human. Skip the AI answer and page a person.
• Capture a lead. Qualify buying intent and route it to sales. See Lead capture.

Example rules

• If customer is VIP, then route to Senior team.
• If plan is Paid and topic is Billing, then page a human.
• If intent is Buying, then capture lead.
• If topic is Security or Legal, then route to a human, whatever the AI confidence.
• If topic is Refund dispute, then route to the billing team.
• If region is EU, then route handoffs to the EU team.

Build your first rule set

1. 01

   Start with forced human routing

   Write one rule per category that must always reach a person: billing disputes, legal, security, account deletion, complaints. These protect you from the worst mistakes.

2. 02

   Add customer segments

   Add rules for VIP, enterprise, or high-value customers so they reach the right people quickly.

3. 03

   Add routing for everything else

   Decide which team handles general handoffs and which stage they land in. One fallback queue is fine to start.

4. 04

   Add lead capture

   Add a buying-intent rule if pre-sales questions reach your support channel.

5. 05

   Test each rule

   Run a test conversation that should trigger each rule and confirm it routes as expected.

Keep rules maintainable

• Start with a handful of rules. You do not need to map every edge case on day one.
• Name rules for what they protect, so anyone on the team can understand them.
• Review rules monthly alongside handoff data. Remove rules that never fire and tighten rules that fire too broadly.
• Do not use rules to patch wrong answers. If the AI answered a documented question wrongly, fix the source article. See Connect knowledge sources.
• Write rules for categories, not individual phrasings. Customers phrase things in endless ways.

Rules and your escalation matrix

Your rules are the executable version of your escalation matrix. If you have a written matrix, translate each row into a rule. If you do not, the rules you write now are a good first draft of one. See escalation matrix template, skills-based routing, and support workflows to automate first.