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The sentiment_router skill - Slack alerts for frustrated customers

Written by Joseph Russo, Principal Architect, Networks and Tech, AskVault · Reviewed by Allison Chan
Last updated: · 3 min read

What the skill does

Growth+

Most escalations come too late: by the time a customer types "let me speak to a manager", the bad experience has already happened. sentiment_router gives your team an early warning.

On each message, the AI can label the customer's mood as positive, neutral, frustrated or angry, with an urgency score from 0 to 1. When the label is frustrated or angry and the urgency is 0.7 or higher, AskVault posts an alert to your Slack incoming webhook with the label, the score and a short paraphrase of what the customer said. Anything below that, or a positive or neutral label, does nothing.

The skill only sends the alert. It does not change the bot's tone, tag the conversation or hand it off by itself. To hand a conversation to a person, use escalate_to_human alongside it.

Set it up

  1. In Slack, create an incoming webhook for the channel where alerts should land, and copy its URL (it starts with https://hooks.slack.com/services/).
  2. In AskVault, open the Skills page, find sentiment_router and open its settings.
  3. Paste the webhook URL and save. The URL is stored encrypted.
  4. Turn the skill on and send a frustrated test message in the chat playground to check the alert arrives.

If the webhook URL is missing, the skill reports that it needs one instead of failing silently.

What the alert contains

  • The mood label (frustrated or angry).
  • The urgency score.
  • A short paraphrase of the customer's message, not the full text.

The same alert is not posted twice within an hour, and the skill is rate-limited per workspace, so a heated conversation does not flood your channel.

False positives and misses

Mood detection is done by the AI model, so it will sometimes flag sarcasm or miss a politely furious customer. Treat alerts as a prompt to look, not a verdict. If you get too many alerts, check them against the conversations and adjust your own response process; the threshold itself is fixed at 0.7.

FAQ

Does the customer know their mood was detected?

No. Only your Slack channel sees the alert.

Does it hand the conversation to a person?

Not by itself. Pair it with escalate_to_human, or have the teammate who sees the alert claim the conversation in the live chat inbox.

Which plan includes it?

Growth and above.

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