Safety rails: what to never automate

Automation is leverage, and leverage works in both directions. This page is about the rails.

Which actions keep a human in the loop

The builder gives you the choice through which action you pick, not through a separate approval setting.

Action	Reaches the customer	Human in the loop
Draft Review Reply	Only after someone approves	✅ Yes, by design
Escalate to Team Inbox	No — hands it to a person	✅ Yes
Notify Team	No — internal only	✅ Yes
Send Email / SMS / Survey	Immediately	❌ No

Draft Review Reply is the safe default for anything negative. You get the speed of automation — the reply is written within seconds of the review appearing — with a person deciding whether it goes out.

Send actions are appropriate where the content is predictable and the risk is low: a survey, a thank-you, a scheduled follow-up.

A sensible starting configuration

Situation	Action
Positive review	Draft Review Reply (or Send Email once you trust the tone)
Survey delivery	Send Survey
Negative review	Draft Review Reply → Notify Team → Escalate to Team Inbox
Anything sensitive	Escalate to Team Inbox only — no Send

Never automate these

Route these to Escalate to Team Inbox, always. Never to a Send action, regardless of how well your workflows are performing.

Illness, injury, or food safety. An automated reply to “we got food poisoning” is a legal problem and a reputational one.

Legal threats or regulators. Anything naming a lawyer, a claim, a regulator, or a formal complaint process.

Discrimination or staff conduct allegations. These need investigation before response — an automated apology can read as an admission.

Safeguarding concerns. Anything involving a minor or a vulnerable person.

Allegations of criminal conduct. Theft, assault, fraud.

The common thread: situations where the wrong response is far worse than a slow one. Automation optimises for speed; these need judgement.

Build these as a condition near the top of your workflow — test the review or response text for the relevant terms with CONTAINS, and route the true branch straight to Escalate to Team Inbox with no Send step anywhere on that path.

→ Conditions and branching → Taking over a conversation

Rails worth adding to every workflow

A recency condition, so nobody is contacted repeatedly. The most common complaint about automated systems isn’t the message — it’s the third message.

An internal exclusion, so your team’s testing doesn’t email customers.

A configured default branch on every Survey Response Condition. People don’t answer surveys; without a default, a large share of customers silently fall out of the flow.

An off switch you know how to find. Before activating, know how to deactivate.

Review what your workflows did

Read the run history weekly for the first month, then monthly. You’re checking:

1. Did anything fire that shouldn’t have?
2. Did anything not fire that should have?
3. Does the copy still sound like you?

Workflows drift as the business changes around them. The one that made sense last year may be quietly wrong now.