What Is Escalation Management and How to Manage It Effectively?
Ever have that sinking feeling when a customer escalates an issue? Like a ticking time bomb, it will go off and jeopardise your brand’s reputation and customer loyalty.
But what if there was some way to defuse these situations before they escalate?
In today’s fast-moving digital world, customers need quick and effective solutions. Whenever these needs are not satisfied, frustration can easily boil over into escalations.
Realize why escalations happen and take proactive steps to minimise them, ensuring a continuum of your customer experience.
Let’s consider strategies for effective prevention and management of escalations.
What Is Escalation Management?
Escalation management is the process of identifying customer issues that couldn’t be resolved by the first point of contact and are, in turn, still going on to fix them on priority.
Each customer reaches out to a brand hoping that their issues will be resolved as soon as possible.
Quick resolutions to customer complaints improve customer satisfaction, and there is more likelihood that they will be your brand ambassadors. Escalation, if not handled well, might have just the opposite effect.
Human agents, along with optimized workflows, can go a long way in tackling call escalations.
Escalations have a ripple effect on contact center metrics such as FCR, AHT, negative customer sentiment, CSAT, and NPS.
You should resolve escalations by knowing where the gap exists in your process, through regular training of agents, and a refresh of self-help resources like your knowledge base periodically.
The 2 Major Reasons For Escalation are:
Miscommunication:
Sometimes, there may be a case when the agent would not be trained properly, or sometimes knowledge of how to solve an issue might be lacking.
SLA violations:
SLAs are a set of predefined rules followed by customer support for solving the tickets; one of the most common forms of SLA violation is when a customer support agent fails to respond to a query on time.
This will be the most crucial step toward ensuring that customers remain satisfied and happy, with their concerns given due priority; this can help the brand signify itself as trustworthy to ultimately boost customer retention.
However, if the customer doesn’t get a satisfactory resolution, they can escalate to higher authorities of the organization aiming for a better quick response.
Have An Escalation Management Policy In Place
Address SLA breaches with an Escalation Management Policy. SLAs define the duration a ticket has to be resolved.
To start, internal SLAs have to be defined so that SLAs are adhered to. The instances when an escalation would be needed, and the course of action when there is an escalation, need to be understood.
For instance, create a set of rules to automatically trigger an escalation in the case of internal SLA breaches.
- A product or service is not delivered three days after purchase.
- CSAT score falls below 25%.
- A customer cannot get in touch with a contact center agent even after trying a few times.
Types Of Escalation And Their Importance?
In other words, the fewer the number of escalation calls, the better your customer service. Therefore, it is important to develop a system that would aid your customer support team and call center agents in de-escalating the most urgent and sensitive concerns.
Being able to handle escalations in your call center will relate directly to customer satisfaction and customer experience. However, there exist different types of escalations.
There are several types of escalations based on their extremity, how complex and grave they are, and how they affect customer service.
Following are various kinds of escalations, which are generally mentioned and a very critical role they play in providing better care:
1. Technical Escalation
Technical escalations, more commonly known as functional escalations, are those that normally occur at any time when a ticket happens to fall outside the scope of an agent’s capability.
Such escalations could even happen at those times when the agent may require support from other teams that have much more know-how on that particular matter or may be further assisted even by his team.
It might be further elevated to a “departmental escalation”, depending on the customer’s demands, in which case the whole problem is passed on for its resolution to an entirely different department within the company.
For this reason, functional escalations are very important; they prevent dropping the conversations or holding them too long, which then can lead to a violation of SLA and hamper the company’s reputation.
Rather, they ensure that the customer gets connected with the right agent or representative to resolve their problem.
2. Hierarchical Escalation
When a customer specifically asks to speak with a higher authority in the team or organization, that would be considered a hierarchical escalation, also referred to as management escalation from time to time.
There is usually an instance of a hierarchical escalation when an agent is unable to fulfill the requests of a customer due to formal policies, legal issues, or even because the problem requires the expertise of a technical specialist.
The customer could receive a more elaborate explanation of the dissatisfaction with their needs from a manager or higher power level, or the agent may even work with higher powers for special treatment.
3. Automated Escalation
Nowadays, companies have policies discussing the guidelines for customer service answers and resolutions in great detail, usually in the form of service-level agreements.
Further, within these service level agreements, there are agreements based on metrics such as the speed at which the first response is required, also known as the first response time.
How much time can an agent spend to work on a problem, estimated as the average handle time?
How many minutes are remaining until the case is closed or resolved?
To ensure these SLAs are complied with at all times, their customer service staff are further engaged with automatic SLA monitoring tools that are fully integrated with their helpdesk software.
Otherwise, the system will raise the ticket and notify the escalation of the concerned parties automatically.
Businesses that have such agreements with their clients and want to consistently maintain a certain level of SLA compliance require SLA monitoring solutions. It can be done via automatic escalations.
4. Priority Escalation
A priority escalation is treated in terms of urgency and is escalated upwards to higher levels of authority faster. The idea is to filter out high-priority problems and route those to the correct support teams.
However the relative priority of each would determine its position; for instance, a credit card fraud report would take precedence over the planned shipment of a product one day overdue.
Challenges Of Escalation Management
Lack Of Clearly Defined Escalation Process
One of the major issues in escalation management is that there is no consistency in the process.
Organizations should have a well-documented escalation process to describe the types of escalations and the activities that need to be performed to resolve these escalations.
However most organizations do not have a well-defined process; therefore, much confusion arises, and delays occur before actual problem resolution.
High Levels Of Escalation
It is tough to handle the escalations well for companies getting a lot of escalations.
Some of the results or aftereffects of high escalations are increased call center fatigue, poor service quality, and delayed resolutions.
Lack Of Proper Resources Or Empowerment
Companies that find challenges in managing escalations are those that don’t have easy access to de-escalation resources.
Another reason that may impede the process of an amicable settlement or a de-escalation is the inability of the agent to make judgments or present solutions that meet the customer’s needs.
How To Establish An Escalation Management Process?
Customer care teams have to establish an escalation management process so that they can respond immediately and resolve the issue(s) of the customer before it becomes a crisis.
While setting up your escalation management process flow, remember these important steps.
Step 1: Make Initial Settings
Identify the type of escalations likely to face your team; the conditions for each type of escalation, and the levels of escalations for those tickets based on their urgency.
You can frame your escalation process based on any internal or customer-used SLAs regularly.
Step 2: Define your Escalation Procedure
Something like consider-where would I be engaging with the people on escalation?
- Who are the parties?
- How long would it take to reach every level of escalation?
You can evolve a good, practical solution process that will help in downscaling urgent situations much faster if you provide adequate answers to all of the above questions.
Step 3: Communicate The Escalation Process
After the escalation procedure is set and finalized, it should be communicated to all your stakeholders, namely supervisors, other supporting team members, and all your contact center workers.
The clear communication of the process to all parties that are part of the escalation assures that unnecessary delays in the response will be at a minimum because they are informed as to what they will do next.
Step 4: Continuously Evaluate And Make Adjustments
Once the process is set up, it becomes essential to check for its effectiveness and make continuous enhancements by taking feedback from your stakeholders.
A smooth review of your escalation process will ensure that your escalations always get dealt with professionally and will help you avoid any potential crisis.
5 Must-Have Skills To Deal With Escalation
Different sets of skills are required to manage escalations effectively. Some of them are as follows:
1. Excellent Communication
To manage the situation effectively, the agents have to be capable of communicating with consumers, team members, and other stakeholders.
2. Problem-Solving Ability
The escalation manager needs to be in a better position to think outside the box about unique solutions to critical situations. They should also be capable of determining what the root cause of the issue is.
3. Leadership Skills
Leading well requires a senior professional to guide the team leads on escalation management to motivate and energize the team members, with clear directions given by him.
4. Emotional Intelligence
Agents need a high degree of emotional intelligence to connect with customers to handle and control their emotions from the customer’s perspective.
5. Time Management
The customer care teams may be guaranteed that escalations are resolved within the predefined window of time by developing their time management skills.
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The ability to escalate can be enhanced by some key steps, including:
1. Clearly Define Escalation Matrices And SLAs
A well-planned SLA helps you to understand your role and responsibilities in the escalation process, thus helping to resolve the issue with much speed.
There is also another important document used by customer support professionals that helps them expedite the settlement process of an escalation-known as the escalation matrix.
Escalation matrix refers to the procedure or documentation involved in describing the steps that need to be followed while resolving an escalation at different levels of an organization in its various departments, as well as when and how they shall be initiated.
The following is an example of an escalation matrix:
Equipped with all this information at their fingertips, your representatives will avoid having to pause a conversation to look for pertinent points of contact when the consumer is already upset. At the right time, they can escalate their question to the relevant process stakeholder.
2. Provide Your Agents With Proper Tools And Train Them To Empathise
Critical Escalation Call Handling training will help agents become more predictive about future events and chart their course of action.
It is also very important that the stakeholders in escalations must be compulsorily trained in soft skills of active listening, empathy, and conflict resolution.
By the time an issue is escalated, a customer is already frustrated, and that is the period when empathy can work wonders.
So, train your agents to enhance their soft skills, such as problem-solving, active listening, and adaptability, and show them how to handle a customer call with empathy.
9 out of 10 Americans say brands should be more empathetic.
Increase the empathetic quotient of your call center agents by encouraging them to use phrases like: “I hear you, and I fully understand how frustrating this whole process has been,” or “We will make sure you get all the help required to resolve this issue.”
Simple phrases like these go a long way in placating tense, angry customers and building better relationships with improved brand loyalty.
Having the right tools, such as a unified contact center solution or collaboration-friendly places within tickets, really eases coordinating with other teams and agents.
3. Always Investigate The Problems Underlying Causes of a Problem
Proper root cause analysis helps to find the real cause of a problem and to identify and prevent further deterioration as early as possible.
There could be various causes for an escalation to take place.
What is most important is to resolve the situation, but following up with a good analysis once the situation has been resolved is also crucial if you want to ensure that such an escalation will not happen again.
Be certain to connect with the team from the very first agent who addressed the issue at Level One through those who were involved in the resolution of the escalation thereafter to map out the whole process and find the inefficiencies.
Get answers to questions like:
- Why did the issue occur?
- What caused the escalation?
- Does this happen frequently?
- Is there a gap in your escalation process?
- Is your product or service defective or cannot be used by the customer?
- Is your UI the problem?
An in-depth analysis of this will provide some vital points. Engage all the stakeholders, discuss it, prepare a report, and outline steps to avoid the recurrence of escalations.
4. Update The Client On Resolution Progress Regularly
When a customer complains, it simply means that up to that point in time, they are not pleased with the way the problem is being solved.
Your customers are assured that indeed their problem is working towards active resolution and will not lose faith in your company by updating them on the discussions that are taking place internally.
That is, the customer should be informed at every instant about the status of their problem. If there is a delay in the communication, then surely, during the period the issue is being escalated, the condition will aggravate further. Be transparent over every step that you are going to take for the resolution of the problem.
Even after the complaint is resolved, get in contact again with the customer and ask if everything is fine or if there is still some issue.
Locobuzz- A Unified CX Platform
The powerful Customer Experience (CX) platform, Locobuzz, aspires to enable brands to interact better with their customers on various platforms.
Utilizing cutting-edge technology in artificial intelligence, machine learning, and big data analytics, Locobuzz molds customer experiences in several impactful ways.
Key Features of Locobuzz:
1. Personalization by Artificial Intelligence
The Locobuzz platform takes advantage of AI to produce an individually tailored response for a customer under brand guidelines. This results in personalized interactions with customers, while at the same time maintaining the brand voice, thus making customers happier and more loyal.
2. All Kinds of Summarizations
Locobuzz comes with five different kinds of summarizations: Quick, Detailed, Timeline, Issue, and Customer Expectation. These summarize different types of information through which brands can answer customer queries and issues.
3. Faster Response Efficiency
With features such as Response Assist, Locobuzz streamlines ticket analysis to reduce time required to understand a customer query significantly. That streams to faster responses and better customer service.
4. Real-Time Analytics and Insights
Reports given by the platform are dynamically detailed and categorized. In this way, the brand is able to understand the customer sentiment and how it behaves-all the necessary information to make informed decisions and strategize on improving service delivery.
5. Crisis Management Capabilities
Locobuzz empowers a brand to have the tools for effective crisis management through its social listening capabilities. Through monitoring in real-time negative, positive, and neutral sentiments, it immediately allows a brand to address issues before they grow out of control, therefore saving its reputation.
6. Benchmarking with Competitors
Comprehensive competitor analysis is part of the functionality on the platform, so it will help you identify the activities of the competitors and their performance. Brands may subsequently get a glimpse of market trends and adjust their responses accordingly.
Conclusion
After all, escalation management is such an important process that businesses function effectively to handle customer issues that could not be resolved at the first point of contact. It helps bring priority and resolution of issues as quickly as possible.
Escalation management becomes so crucial to avoid major crises for the brand and de-escalating events before customers get frustrated and move away from your brand.
