A 311 resident explicitly asks to speak with a human. What should the agent do?

In a municipal 311 resident-services workflow, an explicit request to speak with a human is a hard escalation trigger, not a soft preference. The correct action is to escalate immediately without additional probing or delay. Residents who say they want a person have already completed the consent step that most civic desks treat as mandatory handoff; continuing automated interrogation after that ask erodes trust, inflates handle time, and can violate published service standards for human access on city contact channels.

Immediate escalation works because it honors resident agency, preserves an auditable reason code (explicit human request), and prevents the agent from inventing extra gates that policy never authorized. The handoff packet should include the transcript so far, identifiers already collected, and the resident's stated ask—without forcing another full restatement.

Asking several more clarifying questions before offering a human fails because it treats the explicit request as optional and reintroduces friction the resident already rejected. Ignoring the request to finish an automated troubleshooting script fails because script completion is subordinate to resident-initiated escalation; finishing the tree after a human ask is a policy override disguised as helpfulness. Requiring the resident to restate the entire case before escalating fails because it duplicates effort, risks transcription drift, and punishes the resident for choosing a human path that the city offered.

Exam caveat: distinguish an explicit human request from inferred frustration or vague complexity—only the explicit ask (plus documented policy gaps or inability to progress) is a guaranteed escalate-now condition in this framing. Operational check: when a 311 caller says they want a person, stop probing, attach the current case context, and route to a human queue immediately without additional script gates.