Case study·Platform

Exception-to-human escalation

From silent failures and lost alerts — to a routed exception with the right owner and a drafted fix

62%
Mean time to owner reductionFrom detection to a named owner acknowledging the exception
“Failures reached the right person with the right context.”
Operations Lead · Enterprise operations
Enterprise operations·120 production workflows across 6 business units·5-week pilot·United Kingdom
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01Pilot envelope
Pilot length5 weeks
First signal5 days
First ROI30 days
Team alongside5 seats · 2 colleagues

5-week exception-management pilot; defined escalation targets by workflow and severity; the colleague proposed remediation while a human confirmed.

02What it owns
Reports toOperations Lead, with a dotted line to the IT Lead on infrastructure-class failures.
Owns
  • Failure detection — continuous read of source app error logs and the Unify workflow log against agreed thresholds
  • Severity classification — every failure tagged by workflow, severity and downstream impact using the codified rules
  • Escalation routing — each exception routed to the named owner via Slack, Teams or email with linked context
  • Remediation drafts — proposed fix or rerun written against the workflow runbook and queued for human confirmation
  • Escalation audit trail — every detection, route, draft and confirmation logged in the Unify workflow audit
Does not do
  • Auto-remediation — never executes a fix or rerun without explicit human confirmation
  • Owner reassignment — surfaces unowned routes for the Operations Lead to assign, never reassigns silently
  • Customer-facing communication — drafts internal context only; the customer admin owns any external message
Done looks like

Failed runs reach the right owner within minutes, with a drafted fix and a clear ask. The weekly review opens on the exceptions themselves, not on whether they were seen.

03The team
AI teammates2
LenaReads source app error logs and the Unify workflow log, classifies each failure by workflow and severity against the agreed rules, and routes it to the named owner with full context.
TheoPulls the relevant runbook step or prior fix, drafts a concrete remediation — rerun, config change or follow-up task — and queues it for the human owner to confirm before anything executes.
Human team5
  • Operations LeadOperations
  • 4 Escalation ownersOperations
  • IT LeadIT
  • Customer adminCustomer Operations
  • Unify Success partnerUnify
04Connected stack
SlackMicrosoft TeamsOutlookHubSpotJiraWorkflow audit logSource app error logs
05What it returned
62%Mean time to owner reductionFrom detection to a named owner acknowledging the exception
31%Repeated failures reductionSame root cause recurring within a 30-day window
0Silent failures in pilot workflowsAcross the 30-day measurement window vs the 60-day baseline
  • Day 0
    Co-ordinator sessionOperations Lead, escalation owners, IT and Unify success align on workflow scope, severity rules and escalation targets.
  • Day 5
    First routed exceptionLena reads error logs and the workflow log read-only; the first severity-tagged exception is routed to its named owner with linked context.
  • Day 12
    Severity rules liveEscalation owners review and adjust the severity matrix; routing covers all 120 pilot workflows.
  • Day 21
    Remediation drafts liveTheo proposes a concrete fix or rerun for each routed exception; owners confirm before any action runs.
  • Day 30
    ROI reviewSponsor signs off mean time to owner, repeat-failure and silent-failure metrics, and approves expansion beyond the pilot workflows.
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Each design-partner pilot starts the same way: one workflow, the minimum useful context, and a first ROI signal measured in days.

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