Escalation: who decides, and how fast
Most escalations are not knowledge problems, they are authority problems. The agent knows exactly what would fix it and is not allowed to do it. Give the first person a small budget and a written list of what they may decide, and the escalation queue shrinks without anybody learning anything new.
The three real reasons
| Reason | Fix |
|---|---|
| Not allowed to decide | Raise the authority limit |
| Does not know the answer | Write it down where they will find it |
| Customer asked for a manager | Honour it, quickly |
Count which of the three yours are for a fortnight. In most businesses the first row dominates, and it is the cheapest to fix.
A spending authority
Pick a number the business can lose without a meeting - the value of one typical order, often. Below it, the person answering may refund, replace, resend or waive without asking. Above it, they escalate.
The maths is usually decisive. If an escalation costs a manager fifteen minutes and delays the customer two hours, and the median disputed amount is small, the authority pays for itself the first week. Businesses resist this because the failure mode is visible - a refund somebody could have argued about - while the cost of the alternative is a queue nobody attributes.
What an escalation must carry
- What the customer wants, in one line.
- What has already been offered and refused.
- What the agent recommends. An escalation without a recommendation is a delegation of the whole problem.
- The deadline the customer was given.
The rule that makes it work
The customer does not start again. Whoever picks it up reads the conversation first. Asking somebody to re-explain a problem to a second person is the moment they stop believing the business is competent, and it is entirely avoidable when the whole history is in one place.
Close the loop back
The person who escalated should see how it was resolved. Otherwise they escalate the same thing next week, having learned nothing, and the escalation queue is a permanent feature rather than a diminishing one.
Questions people actually ask
When should a support agent escalate?
When the decision is outside their authority or the answer is outside their knowledge. If it is neither, escalation is a process problem - usually an authority limit set too low.
How do I reduce escalations?
Give the first person a small spending authority and the answers to the things they escalate most. Both are cheaper than the queue the escalations create.
Njiwa
One inbox for WhatsApp, Facebook and Instagram, and an API that sends over either WhatsApp rail. 7 days free, no card.