Escalate

Updated: 12/31/2022 by Computer Hope

With computers, troubleshooting, and support, escalate, or an escalation, is a process of involving someone with more training, knowledge, privileges, or rank to help resolve a problem.

Technical support escalation process

To give you a better idea of the process, the following steps are an example of how an escalation might take place.

  1. A customer calls into technical support with a problem they're having and reaches a level one technical support representative.
  2. After getting the customer's information and description of the problem, the representative determines they don't know how to solve the problem.
  3. The representative puts the customer on hold while they call or talk with a higher level representative. The level two technician determines it would be best to transfer the customer to them to help diagnose the problem.
  4. After working with the customer, the level two technician determines the problem is an unknown product defect that can only be further diagnosed or resolved by a developer. The level two technician escalates the problem by submitting a troubleshooting ticket with information about the problem and lets the customer know they'll be contacted once resolved.
  5. A few days later, a developer opens the ticket, troubleshoots the problem, creates a fix, makes a software update to resolve the problem, and mentions the resolution in the ticket.
  6. The level two technician gets notified about the ticket update and calls the customer back with instructions on applying the update and verifies it fixes the original problem.

In this example, the customer is escalated between different levels of technical support, ands having their problem redirected to a different department. A company may have several levels of technical support based on training and experience. An employee may also be required to escalate someone's case because they lack the necessary access to resolve a customer's problem. For example, a customer may need to be escalated to a manager to get a refund.

Business terms, Customer service, Esc, Help desk, Technical support, Troubleshoot