We’ve all experienced those moments when we need urgent assistance as a customer, and we find ourselves in a dilemma – the support agent you're speaking to just can't seem to grasp the issue or keeps offering simplistic solutions that fail to resolve the problem. How long does it take before you give up and switch company?
Here’s a better question: What could your own customer service teams do to prevent this scenario? The answer lies in setting up a strong ticket escalation process.
Whether you’re new to ticket escalation or you want to up your current strategy, read on. In this article, we’ll discuss the importance and stages of the support escalation process and give you our top tips for process optimization.
But let’s start with the basics.
What Is Ticket Escalation
Ticket escalation is like a special path in customer service where if your problem is really tricky or needs more attention, it gets passed to someone with more knowledge or authority.
Imagine you have a problem and the first person you talk to can't solve it or doesn't understand it well. Ticket escalation helps make sure your problem doesn't get stuck there – it moves up to people who know more and can help you better.
Ticket escalation is a process customer support teams use to handle issues that require a higher level of attention or expertise. When a support agent can't resolve a customer issue, they escalate the ticket, meaning they transfer it to a support agent with more knowledge or authority.
The main point of ticket escalation is ensuring you get the best help possible, especially when your problem is complicated. As your problem goes through different steps, it goes to people with more experience and power to fix it. This helps fix issues faster and ensures you're happy with the solution.
So, ticket escalation is a helpful way for companies to deal with tough problems and make sure customers are happy with the answers they get.
A smooth ticket escalation process is a prerequisite for good customer service. Let’s see why.
Why Is Ticket Escalation Essential for Your Business
Suppose you need help because you can't log in to your account on a web platform. A frontline support agent tries to fix the issue. They suggest you check if Caps Lock is on and delete your cache files. When that doesn't work, they ask you to “please be patient” for a while and then walk you through other basic actions that only seem partly related to the problem. After 40 minutes, you still haven’t been able to log in.
Finally, the agent asks a more experienced colleague for help, and after explaining the case from scratch, they get the answer — you're trying to access the service from a country where it isn't available. Using a VPN fixes the issue.
Your problem is solved, but you’re unlikely to be satisfied with the service. In fact, with a clear ticket escalation process in place, the issue could have been fixed in minutes. When the first measures had no effect, the ticket could have been passed to a more experienced agent who would have checked your IP address and location and then promptly given you a solution.
Ticket escalation is essential because customers don't like to wait. When your agents don’t have a clearly defined procedure for dealing with trickier issues, resolution time lags behind customers' expectations, which leaves callers unsatisfied and ready to switch to your competitors.
| Benefits | Description |
| Better problem solving | In the world of customer support, think of ticket escalation as the warp-speed transport that beams intricate challenges right into the capable hands of our resident experts. These seasoned pros are the ultimate troubleshooters, armed with the knowledge to craft precision solutions that make even the most perplexing problems vanish into thin air. |
| Faster resolutions | Elevated challenges take a direct route to our seasoned pros, unlocking a portal to rapid and super-smooth solutions. With their savvy skills, you'll witness resolutions that move at the speed of light, leaving cumbersome problems in the rearview mirror. |
| Customer satisfaction | Nailing the art of tending to concerns doesn't just stop at solving problems – it's like adding jet fuel to customer satisfaction and loyalty. It's all about nurturing those feel-good vibes that lay the foundation for strong, trust-filled connections. |
| Maintaining reputation | A rock-solid escalation process shines like a spotlight on your dedication to tackling challenges head-on. It's like giving your business's reputation a turbo boost, showcasing your unwavering resolve to make things right. |
| Learning and improvement | Diving deep into those escalated cases is like unearthing a treasure trove of wisdom. It's all about unlocking the secrets to getting even better – learning from the past to dodge those pesky hurdles in the future. |
| Building trust | Laying it all out with a crystal-clear escalation process is like a trust-building masterstroke. It's the secret sauce that tells your customers, "Hey, we've got your back," making sure those hiccups are smoothed out, and issues are squashed with ninja-like precision. |
Let’s turn to what a ticket escalation process looks like in practice.
How the Ticket Escalation Process Works
The specifics of ticket escalation vary according to company size and structure. Still, the general approach remains the same and includes the following escalation tiers.
Tier 0: Self-service
Self-service options like a knowledge base and chatbots can solve most common customer issues. This is the entry point into the help desk escalation process: when a customer first contacts the company, they talk with a chatbot that creates a ticket and offers a solution when possible. If the chatbot can't find a solution, it assigns the ticket to a tier 1 human agent.
Tier 1: Frontline customer support agents
Tier 1 agents deal with customer inquiries and issues that can't be solved by self-service. This team handles common and straightforward problems, drawing from a knowledge base and basic product knowledge. When an agent can't fix an issue, they use help desk software and help desk escalation procedures to assign the ticket to higher-tier agents or developers by tagging a specialist or group of specialists.
Tier 2: More experienced support agents
Tier 2 support agents possess a deeper understanding of the product and have specialized training to tackle challenging issues. They also have access to additional resources, customer data, and tools that aid in troubleshooting. When they can't fix a problem, they use help desk software to escalate the ticket to the next tier.
Tier 3: Developers and engineers
When simple troubleshooting isn't enough, developers or engineers will need to address the issue. Personnel at this tier have the technical expertise and specialized knowledge to investigate and resolve critical issues that may significantly impact customer experience or business operations. They focus on finding in-depth solutions that can require technical intervention.
As you can see, the principle of ticket escalation is simple — when lower-tier agents have trouble fixing a customer's problem, they assign an escalated ticket to an agent with a higher level of expertise or authority. The key here is to know when an agent should persevere and when to escalate.
Let's consider the most common cases.
When to Escalate a Ticket
Despite all the benefits of ticket escalation, it doesn’t make sense to escalate every ticket as soon as an agent hits a wall. In some instances, premature escalation can even increase resolution time and frustrate customers as they're thrown from one agent to another like a hot potato.
Still, there are some clear cases when ticket escalation is the best policy.
When an agent's expertise and access level aren't enough
Frontline agents can solve most common customer problems, but in some cases, they’ll lack the knowledge or platform authority to see an issue through.
Imagine a customer calls to complain that they’ve been charged twice for a service. A frontline agent has two options: either offer the customer credit to the value of the second payment, or reassign the ticket to someone with reimbursement authority.
If the customer requires reimbursement, ticket escalation is the best option since back-and-forth communication between the customer, frontline agent, and manager with reimbursement authority will all add precious minutes to the resolution time.
When an issue takes extra time to resolve
Sometimes, agents can fix a trickier problem by themselves if they spend time on research. The problem is, most customers just want faster service.
For more than half of all customers, a long wait time is the most frustrating aspect of customer support. This is why most businesses use service level agreements (SLAs) and procedures to determine how long tickets can stay unresolved at each support tier.
As an example, for tier 1 agents, tickets should usually be resolved within at most 20 minutes from the moment the customer reports the issue. While time limits can differ from company to company, the principle remains the same — if an issue is complex and takes additional time to resolve, the agent with a sufficient level of expertise should receive it as soon as possible.
When the problem is complex and could affect many customers
Sometimes an issue is severe and complex enough to impact many customers. Solving such an issue fast should be your top priority for two main reasons.
First, a severe problem can harm both your customers and your company's reputation, leading to financial losses or lawsuits. For example, suppose your e-commerce platform develops a glitch that means the sellers you host can’t accept customer payments. In this case, store owners might require compensation for the hours or days they were unable to sell.
Second, even if an issue doesn't have severe consequences, solving it faster will reduce the number of new tickets about the issue. For example, instead of directing every single user to an alternative payment option, it’s better to fix the existing system.
For both reasons, when a lower-tier agent receives such an issue, they should escalate it fast to the managerial level or developers with the knowledge and authority to handle it.
These are just two examples. Of course, there are an infinite number of situations when ticket escalation might be needed, which is why the secret to successful escalation lies in creating a standard process.
Let’s look at what goes into a strong escalation workflow.
Six Tips to Build a Great Ticket Escalation Process
When escalating a ticket, keep customers informed at every step and ensure that employees don't waste time on unnecessary actions that increase time to resolution. In other words, your service desk escalation process should be both transparent and optimized to leave customers satisfied with the service. The following tips can help.
What are the six tips to build your ticket escalation process?
- Use technology to empower agents and customers
- Clearly define your SLAs
- Prioritize
- Adopt omnichannel escalation
- Track, evaluate, and learn from your escalation history
- Keep the customer updated and follow up
Now, let’s get down to each step in more detail.
Use technology to empower agents and customers
One of the best things you can do to optimize ticket escalation is to automate routine tasks with technology. Automation software improves a help desk escalation process in several ways:
- It frees up agents to focus more on customer issues.
- It ensures consistent and flawless service through established standards (like escalating a ticket after a specific time has elapsed)
- It records all agent actions and standardizes data storage.
With automation, you can be sure that your workflows work as intended.
Clearly define your SLAs
Your SLA is your employee's roadmap and reference for serving customers. It should include detailed descriptions of your help desk escalation policies, including time frames for each tier, escalation scenarios, and ticket priorities. For some of these elements, such as time frames, you can set up automation rules to avoid distracting agent attention.
Prioritize
Some customer issues are more urgent than others, and when dozens of tickets arrive simultaneously, your employees have to prioritize. Your escalation process should include a checklist that helps agents to determine the priority level of each issue, depending, for example, on its type or the customer's importance.
You can also automate prioritization to free up agent time. As well as considering the customer and issue type, a help desk system can automatically change a standard ticket's status to a high-priority ticket if it remains unresolved for a specified time.
Adopt omnichannel escalation
You’ll need to make sure that tickets have the same escalation process, no matter whether a customer contacted you via email, social media, messenger, or call. What’s more, if a customer needs to switch channels for either convenience or security, the conversation should continue on the same ticket. Omnichannel escalation saves your agents from mix-ups. It also saves callers from answering the same questions multiple times, which is a key frustration for 41% of customers.
Track, evaluate, and learn from your escalation history
By monitoring escalation history with automation tools, you can define patterns the naked eye can miss. For example, you may find that certain tier 1 agents escalate issues corresponding to their level too often or that your team is repeatedly dealing with a simple problem your developers can fix. In both scenarios, you can make some improvements — train tier 1 agents and update SLAs to reduce support escalation, and assign developers to fix the bug and reduce ticket quantity.
Keep the customer updated and follow up
Finally, a good escalation process will make sure you don’t keep customers hanging while you're looking for solutions to their problems. For instance, before escalating a ticket, a lower-tier agent should explain that an agent specializing in the customer's issue will take the lead. At higher tiers, an agent should warn how long resolution may take.
With good transparency, a customer can adjust their expectations and won’t spend minutes or hours wondering if you’re still on their case. As a result, your customer satisfaction rate improves.
Manage Your Ticket Escalation
Ticket escalation is crucial for efficient customer support as it ensures the right expertise tackles complex tickets promptly, enhancing customer satisfaction.
A strong ticket escalation process requires clear escalation paths, comprehensive staff training, and transparent communication between agents and customers. Process monitoring and evaluation are also important, as they help highlight bottlenecks and recurring customer issues.
Automation software plays a central role in ticket escalation, letting your teams offload routine tasks and perform them flawlessly. As a result, agents can focus more on what they do best: strengthening customer relationships. This is why it’s important to choose the right help desk or service desk for your needs and derive the benefits that a well-structured escalation system brings to your business.
Frequently Asked Questions
Having a clear ticket escalation process brings several advantages, like quicker issue solving, happier customers, better resource use, and improved team communication. It ensures urgent problems get resolved by the right experts, avoiding delays and customer frustration.
Handling escalated tickets well means acting fast, clear communication, and teamwork across support levels. Assess urgency, assign to the right team, and keep customers updated. Regular updates and transparency manage expectations and reassure customers.
Customer feedback is crucial for refining the escalation process. Analyzing feedback helps identify recurring issues, assess escalation's effectiveness, and make improvements. This iterative approach boosts customer experience and process efficiency.
Common mistakes include unclear escalation paths, poor communication during escalation, missing SLAs, and involving wrong experts. Avoiding these errors is vital for maintaining trust and quality service.
- Functional escalation: Moving the issue to a higher level within the same department.
- Hierarchical escalation: Escalating to a higher authority in the organizational hierarchy.
- External escalation: Involving third-party entities or regulatory bodies to address the issue.
In customer service, escalation means shifting an issue to higher support levels if frontline agents can't solve it quickly. Experts handle complex problems for satisfactory solutions.
Service Level Agreements (SLAs) define response and resolution times for support requests. Escalations occur when SLAs are at risk of being breached, prompting faster action to meet the predefined timelines.
An escalation matrix is a predefined hierarchy that outlines who to contact when an issue requires escalation. It clarifies the escalation path based on the severity and nature of the problem.
In ITIL, escalation means moving a support issue to a higher level with more expertise. This ensures incidents are handled by specialists when needed.
