After-Hours Call Triage Workflow: Vapi/Retell → Slack & Gmail

After-hours call triage that turns Vapi/Retell transcripts into Slack pages + a 7am Gmail digest

This n8n automation accepts end-of-call webhooks from Vapi and Retell, uses OpenAI to classify urgency from the transcript, logs everything to Google Sheets, and automatically escalates repeat/critical calls to your on-call team via Slack—then sends an overnight Gmail summary at 7am.

What this workflow does

• Receives end-of-call webhooks from Vapi, Retell, or a direct test POST, and immediately acknowledges receipt.
• Normalizes the payload to extract caller identity, transcript, timestamps, and metadata, then loads triage settings from Google Sheets.
• Classifies call urgency with OpenAI (emergency, urgent, routine, or spam) and generates a one-sentence summary from the transcript.
• Detects and groups repeat calls from the same caller into a single incident, escalating based on configured severities or when a third call occurs within the repeat window.
• Creates an audit trail by writing call details to the Google Sheets “Call Log” and upserting incident state into the n8n Data Table ledger.
• Escalates via Slack when needed: posts to the on-call channel, waits 10 minutes, and pages the backup Slack channel if the incident still isn’t marked handled.
• Sends a 7am digest with Gmail: reads overnight items from Google Sheets, builds an HTML brief grouped by escalated cases and callback requests, and emails it only if calls occurred.

Use cases

• After-hours monitoring for customer calls placed through Vapi/Retell—triage to the right team without manual review.
• Escalation when the same caller repeats—help ensure urgent issues aren’t missed.
• Morning operational visibility via a Gmail HTML digest of escalated items and callbacks.

Technical details

• Integrations/nodes: Webhook, OpenAI, Google Sheets, Slack, Gmail, plus logic nodes such as if/code/wait.
• Core workflow components: webhook ingestion, payload normalization, OpenAI urgency classification, Google Sheets call logging, n8n Data Table incident ledger, Slack on-call + backup paging, and a scheduled 7am Gmail email.
• Setup: connect credentials for OpenAI, Google Sheets, Slack, and Gmail.