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Escalation management is of great benefit to any customer service. No matter how efficient the escalation handling process a company uses to offer its products or services, a customer can still face issues.
For this reason, if the agents find it hard to resolve the issues or take more time than expected to resolve them, then they can get an escalation.
In this article, I will take you through the best escalation management tips to consider for your customer support to be stellar. In addition, you will briefly learn the definition and types of escalations as well as the common causes of escalations.
What is escalation management?
Escalation management is the process in which customers’ issues are moved or reassigned to a different agent, preferably of better expertise and experience, for faster and accurate resolution.
In an escalation management process, if a ticket is not resolved within the set target time, an automated notification is sent to the support lead. The support lead will proceed to escalate it by:
- Asking the assigned agent to resolve the issue faster.
- Reassigning the issue to a different agent with more expertise.
Ticket escalation process helps boost client satisfaction and improve agent productivity.
Types of escalations
To effectively manage escalations, it is crucial first to understand the different types of escalation processes businesses use. Each type serves a unique purpose, ranging from handling technical issues to managing customer complaints.
Below are the main categories of escalation management
Functional escalation management process
Functional escalation management is when the request of a customer fall above the ability of an agent.
For instance, when a ticket needs data and the support agent does not have permission to access it, the ticket will be escalated to a team or person who has proper permissions. This is a functional escalation.
Hierarchical escalation management process
The hierarchical escalation handling process occurs when the issue of a customer requires an agent of a higher rank to step in.
Certainly, this escalation is vital when an agent cannot solve a customer issue. This may be due to the plans of a company or other limitations.
Due to this, a manager may need to make exceptions or supply more resources to resolve the issue.
Automated escalation management process
Automated escalation management utilizes predefined rules and technology to automatically route issues to the appropriate team or individual based on triggers such as SLA violations.
For instance, if a support ticket remains unresolved beyond the SLA’s timeframe, the system automatically escalates it to a more qualified team or higher authority.
This process helps prevent issues from being overlooked, ensures timely resolutions, and improves overall customer satisfaction.
Priority escalation management
Priority escalation management addresses issues according to their urgency and impact on business operations. It ensures that critical incidents, like major service outages, are quickly elevated to the right decision-makers for prompt action.
For instance, cases such as credit card fraud require immediate intervention and take precedence over routine inquiries.
By distinguishing urgent cases from routine support tickets, priority escalation helps businesses stay agile, maintain customer trust, and protect their operational integrity.
Causes of escalation
Understanding the root causes of escalations can help you prevent issues before they spiral. This is evident from the TCN Consumer Survey, which reveals that 73% of customers will switch brands after just one poor experience.
Violation of the SLA
An SLA (Service Level Agreement) outlines the rules agents have to follow to solve the issues of a customer. Additionally, it includes all the situations that need escalation management.
For instance, the ticket escalation process can happen if an issue of a customer is not resolved within the SLA time frame.
Failure to communicate well
This is where a customer and an agent fail to get each other well. This can easily trigger a help desk software escalation.
By communicating, you can get to know the issue of the customer. Moreover, you can get more information to resolve the issue fast.
Lack of skill
When your agents cannot manage a customer’s query, the only option is to escalate. Additionally, when an agent fails to handle the issue of a customer well, the escalation process for customer service might be necessary.
Ticket escalation to a higher agent will assure the customer that their issue is taken care of.
Excess tickets
The goal of your agents is to resolve tickets in a fast and proper way. If agents have many tickets to handle at once from many customers, they can be worn out.
Due to this, agents may need to escalate tickets to reduce the burden.
Escalation management metrics: What to measure and why
Monitoring and analyzing escalation metrics is crucial for efficiently managing issues and maintaining exceptional customer service.
These indicators enable you to make data-driven decisions for customer service and identify areas that require improvement. The following are important escalation management metrics to track:
1. Escalation rate
This is the percentage of total issues or tickets that are escalated out of the total number of cases handled. Tracking the escalation rate helps you gauge how well your frontline team handles issues.
This metric helps pinpoint whether frontline agents are empowered and skilled enough to resolve tickets effectively. It also aids in identifying issues that frequently require escalation.
Calculation: (Number of escalated tickets / Total tickets) × 100
What the numbers tell you:
- High escalation rate: Potential training gaps or process issues
- Low escalation rate: Possible under-escalation or excellent frontline performance
2. Time to escalate
This metric measures the average time taken for an issue to be escalated from the initial contact to the escalation point.
It reveals how quickly your team identifies and elevates complex issues, helping ensure timely intervention. Faster escalation means quicker resolutions and less customer frustration.
Calculation: Total time to escalate / Number of escalated cases
3. Resolution time post-escalation
This metric measures the time from escalation to final resolution. It identifies whether escalated issues are being handled promptly, helping improve escalation workflows.
Measuring how long it takes to resolve issues after escalation shows how effective your escalation team is. Shorter times reflect strong expertise and streamlined processes.
Calculation: Total resolution time after escalation / Number of escalated cases
4. Customer satisfaction after escalation
This metric measures the customer satisfaction scores for escalated cases. It tells you whether escalations are improving the customer experience. High satisfaction means your escalation process is restoring trust and solving problems well.
It is measured using post-resolution CSAT surveys.
5. Escalation outcome analysis
This metric involves tracking and analyzing the results of escalated issues, whether they were resolved successfully, unresolved or escalated again.
It’s key to evaluating the effectiveness of your escalation process and ensuring the right actions are taken at every level.
6. Repeat escalation rate
This is the percentage of cases that escalate multiple times. Repeat escalations highlight problems in how issues are initially handled.
Tracking this helps you fix root causes and prevent customer frustration caused by consistently unresolved problems.
Causes of repeat escalations:
- Inadequate initial assessment
- Insufficient authority at the escalation level
- Communication breakdown
- Incomplete problem resolution
Calculation: (Cases escalated more than once / Total escalated cases) × 100
Top strategies for mastering escalation management
Learning how to handle escalations effectively is crucial in building healthy customer relationships.
Below are some strategies that can help you resolve issues more quickly and professionally.
The first step to do when escalation handling is to create an SLA for customer service. Secondly, you need to train your agents on its contents. They will use its rules to decide when to start the escalation management process. The SLA helps your team to make plans when issues occur.
Each time an SLA violation occurs, your help desk should trigger escalation management based on how you set it up. The following are examples of the ticket escalation process:
- A manager stays in touch with the customer after an escalation is triggered.
- The manager assigns an expert agent to handle a customer’s inquiry as a higher issue.
- A ticket is reassigned to another agent with better abilities if the assigned agent cannot resolve it.
Furthermore, not all escalations triggered are equal in terms of priority. Therefore, you should develop a system that organizes new tickets by:
- Priority
- Type
- Time
In the rush to correct an escalated issue, an agent may feel they don’t have time to do an analysis. Therefore, without a good look at what caused the issue, they can mishandle the case. This disappoints your customers.
It is key that your escalation management process includes time for your agents to look into the causes of problems and how they can be avoided in the future.
Implement a system to track escalated issues. This will help identify trends and patterns in customer complaints, allowing you to address systemic issues and improve overall customer satisfaction.
Additionally, tracking escalations can help you measure the effectiveness of your escalation process and make improvements when needed.
It is not enough for your support agents to know the ins and outs of your product. For escalation handling purposes, you must train your agents to consider and be polite, and not to upset customers.
Your agents also need to know how to channel their anger away from the customers’ eyes and ears. Teach your agents these skills to increase their ability to prevent escalations.
According to a report by Salesforce, 74% of clients state that honest and transparent communication has become more crucial now than prior to the pandemic.
When a customer submits an inquiry, you need to keep them in the loop on the status of their issue. This helps you improve customer satisfaction.
Often updates reduces mistrust, hence limiting the escalation process for customer service. If possible:
- Tell your customers how you are resolving their issues.
- Communicate well
- Ensure your clients know when their issues have been resolved.
Establish a well-defined escalation policy that outlines the steps to follow when dealing with different kinds of customer service issues that need to be escalated.This policy should include:
- Guidelines on how to identify an issue that needs escalation.
- The various levels of escalation.
- The roles and responsibilities of each team member involved in the process.
Define the escalation hierarchy, including the different levels of escalation and individuals responsible for handling issues at each level.
This ensures that issues are escalated to the appropriate person who has the authority and expertise to resolve the issue.
Regularly assess the effectiveness of your customer service escalation process and make adjustments as needed.
This will help ensure that your team is well-equipped to handle escalated issues and deliver a high level of customer satisfaction.
The importance of escalation management in customer service
Escalation in customer service is essential in situations where a customer’s issue cannot be resolved by a first-contact customer support agent. Escalation management is important for several reasons.
Proper issue resolution
Some issues may be too complex for an agent or require a higher level of authority to resolve. Sometimes, agents lack the necessary knowledge or resources.
In these cases, the issue is escalated. Escalation with a proper procedure ensures that the issue is handled by someone with the appropriate expertise and authority to resolve it.
Customer satisfaction
Escalating a customer’s issue to a higher level of support ensures that the customer’s concern is addressed promptly and effectively.
According to research, 80% of customers believe that the experience provided by a company is as significant as its products and services.
Efficient issue resolution can lead to increased customer satisfaction and loyalty.
Reputation management
On a related note, effectively handling escalated issues can:
- Help maintain and improve a company’s reputation.
- Prevent negative word-of-mouth or online reviews.
Customers are more likely to share their negative experiences with others, so addressing issues promptly and effectively through proper escalation channels can help mitigate potential damage to the company’s image.
Legal and compliance issues
In some cases, escalated issues may involve legal or compliance concerns.
Properly addressing and resolving these issues can help prevent potential legal problems or penalties on a larger scale.
They can be escalated straight to people in the legal department who can not only provide solution but fix underlying policy issues.
Learning and employee development
Including a method of tracking escalated issues in your escalation management process can help identify areas where employees may need:
- Additional training
- Support
- Better resources
- Improved processes
Regaining trust
Customers often get annoyed when they have problems with a product or service. When managed effectively, though, escalation offers the opportunity to alter the customer’s perception of your brand.
By including proper communication in your management process, they can see that your team is doing the best they can to help them. You can regain any lost trust stemming from the problem they encountered.
A report by Salesforce indicates that, in times of change, 88% of customers think that trust becomes increasingly significant.
By regaining that trust, you not only reestablish the customer’s faith in your brand, but also potentially provide them with a fresh perception of your company.
Role of BoldDesk in preventing escalation
Through an effective customer escalation management process and customer satisfaction, BoldDesk helps you save time with clients.
Some of the main benefits of adopting BoldDesk for escalation management in your business include the following:
a. Enhances customer escalation management using event trigger automation
BoldDesk has features such as event trigger automation which help you to keep your agents active.
This feature allows you to configure your escalation management process and carry out an action when specific conditions of a ticket or email are met.
Your agents may respond to the queries of your customers with ease, ensuring efficient customer service. When you respond to queries at once, your response becomes a benefit to your clients, your business, and prevents escalation.
b. Enhances time management with time triggers
BoldDesk has features such as time triggers, which enable you to set up automated rules. This feature helps perform repeated actions based on selected gauge every hour.
With it, you can gain the loyalty of your clients and trust fast. As a result, your business is able to grow with minimal escalation management processes.
c. Aids in the analysis of how agents perform
BoldDesk gives you the ability to track and gauge the number of ticket responses and resolutions that fare in your SLA.
As a result, you can track the progress of the ticket to prevent escalation.
It also provides you with an SLA dashboard that provides visual data of the achieved tickets versus the violated tickets over time.
The dashboard measures the efficiency of your team to match consumer expectations thus guiding you on where to improve.
d. Improves prioritization
With BoldDesk, you can distribute preferences using a help desk software. The help desk will manage new tickets and related issues.
For example, if a ticket impacts more than one support worker, BoldDesk will allow your agents to work together on the ticket.
Transform your customer service with effective escalation management
Escalation management is more than just a customer service process; it’s a strategic capability that can transform your entire organization. When done well, it turns frustrated customers into loyal advocates, reduces operational costs, and drives sustainable business growth.
Ready to take your escalation management to the next level? BoldDesk provides you with a world-class escalation management system to help you exceed your customers’ expectations every time.
Take action today. Contact us to discover how you can transform your customer service with BoldDesk’s superior escalation management features.
Request a demo or schedule a consultation with our customer service experts to discuss your specific needs.
Did you find this article interesting? We’d love to hear your thoughts or suggestions; feel free to share them in the comments below.
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- How to Handle Customer Complaints: 5 Best Practices
Frequently Asked Questions
The escalation process is a structured method for resolving customer issues that frontline agents cannot address. It ensures problems are reassigned to more experienced personnel for quicker resolution and better service.
The key steps involved are:
- Monitor unresolved tickets against SLA timelines
- Automatically alert team leads or supervisors
- Reassign issues to agents or managers with higher expertise
If an issue can’t be resolved within expected timelines or by the current support level, escalate it to someone with greater authority or expertise.
This helps maintain SLA compliance and ensures customers receive timely, effective support.
Escalation typically follows these four stages:
- Initial support level – Frontline agents attempt to resolve the issue.
- Functional escalation – The issue is passed to a team with the required technical or system access.
- Hierarchical escalation – The issue is escalated to a supervisor or manager for decision-making or exception handling.
- Executive escalation – In rare cases, the issue is escalated to senior leadership for resolution or policy-level decisions.
Reducing escalation volume while maintaining service quality can be achieved through several strategies, such as:
- Comprehensive agent training to handle more complex issues
- Improved self-service resources and knowledge bases
- Proactive communication about potential issues
- Regular analysis of escalation root causes to address systemic problems
Effective escalation management calls for a mix of soft skills and technical abilities such as:
- Communication: Clear, empathetic, and professional interactions
- Problem-solving: Identifying root causes quickly and proposing actionable solutions
- Decision-making: Knowing when and how to escalate based on urgency and impact
- Conflict resolution: Navigating high-stress situations calmly and constructively
- Technical proficiency: Familiarity with tools and systems within the support workflow
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