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7 Tips To Improve Your Ticket Escalation Process That Works!

Last Updated: March 2024

Looking for ways to improve your ticket escalation process? 

If you ask us, we would definitely vote to give paramount attention to optimizing your ticket escalation procedure. Do you know why?

Well, here is the reason! With an average company receiving 578 net tickets per day, it can make or break your brand’s reputation. 

To put it another way, by satisfactorily resolving these 578 tickets, you can leverage your customer satisfaction. However, if it happens the other way around, you will have a bunch of frustrated customers who can make a crack on your brand’s reputation.

That’s why we have curated some tips to improve your ticket escalation process. Through this post, you will get insights into the following details:

Why Should You Focus On Effective Escalation?

Before we dive into the tips to enhance your escalation handling, let’s be clear about why it is necessary to focus on having an effective escalation process. 

When your customer raises an issue to your attention through a ticket, they won’t be in the mood for a long waiting period. In simple words, they expect a fast response!

In fact, 40% of consumers want brands to take care of their needs quickly. So, if you have a well-organized ticket escalation system, you can offer a better customer experience and increase your customers’ lifetime value as well.

Now, let’s move on to the core part of this post!

7 Tips To Improve Your Ticket Escalation Process

 

1) Work On Detailed Documents

An efficient help desk escalation procedure will have a set of rules called Service Level Agreements (SLA) to standardize your customer support. In fact, 77% of service desks opt for SLAs.

These SLAs assist your frontline support agents on when, how, and to whom they must escalate a particular issue. So, while preparing SLAs, be sure that they are concise and straightforward about your ticket escalation policy.

Furthermore, your SLA should clearly define a time frame for resolving a ticket. As a result, if the time limit is exceeded, the agent will escalate the situation automatically. 

Above all, ensure that your SLAs are written to sync up with the desired outcome of the customer.

 

2) Automate Tasks and Workflows

Manually handling all the tasks related to ticket escalation can take up a lot of your agents’ time. This directly implies more time spent on resolving a ticket. That’s why you should automate your workflows with predefined ticket actions.

With the right customer service tool or escalation software, you can eliminate many of your repetitive tasks and automate your ticket workflows. 

Eager to know how? 

Have a look at the steps that can be taken to optimize your help desk escalation process through automation:

  • Employ chatbots Chatbots can be used for automatic ticket routing to the right agents. Additionally, if you have a knowledge base, chatbots can guide the customer for self-service options and thereby decrease your ticket volume. On top of that, chatbots can save 30% of your customer support costs!
  • Automatic Triggers – With automatic triggers, you can prioritize tickets that need urgent attention. For instance, you can set up alerts for certain specific issues and notify your entire team who needs to be involved in it. 
  • Automatic Tagging – Your agents can easily analyze the nature of a ticket via this feature. Tags can be assigned as per issues, sentiments, topics, keywords, and other criteria. Additionally, your agents can also add custom tags to a ticket if necessary.
  • Automated Ticket Closure –  After escalating a ticket, isn’t manually checking for updates and closing it a redundant task? Moreover, there are also chances of a backlog of unresolved tickets. So, if you use automation, the escalation software will automatically close the ticket once the issue is resolved.

What’s more, automation can also save your budget! Because, the cost of manually handling a helpdesk ticket is around $22, automating the process allows 22% of service desk tickets to be resolved at almost no cost.

3) Enable Your Agents To Replicate The Issue

There may be scenarios when your agent cannot exactly assess the issue of the customer. During those tough situations, encourage your agents to employ an issue replication mechanism. Issue replication is nothing but your agents in a test environment trying to mimic what the customer is doing.

The benefit? Well, there are a handful of answers:

  • Rather than beating around the bush, agents would be able to find out if the problem is associated with a single user or with the whole product. 
  • If it is a single user problem, the agent can analyze if it can be dealt with by him/her or needs an escalation to an expert.
  • If it is a product-wide issue, the agent can immediately tag it as a high-priority ticket that needs the attention of multiple departments and focus on the issue escalation process.
  • If the issue needs to be escalated, the agent can clearly explain and then escalate it to the next agent in the hierarchy.
  • Helps in avoiding unwanted ticket escalations.

4) Assign Priorities 

Each ticket you receive may require a different strategy to deal with. So, it is always advisable to assign priorities to the tickets and to route them to the agents accordingly. 

Generally speaking, tickets are prioritized as follows:

  • Tier 3 – These are low-priority tickets. They can be mostly dealt with by your frontline agents, who are the first point of contact for your customers.
  • Tier 2- These are medium-priority tickets. These tickets may require an agent with more expertise. They must have in-depth product knowledge or troubleshooting skills.
  • Tier 1 – These are high-priority tickets that must be dealt with at the earliest. Since the issues will be more serious, sometimes it may require the collaboration of multiple teams or departments. The agents must also be experts at handling these escalations.

If you are wondering how to make this happen, just relax! Your SLAs and automated workflows can act as your saviors.

Have the right blend of your SLAs, automated workflows, and ticket escalation matrix. Then, your team wouldn’t have to worry about manually assigning such priorities during escalation handling.

 

5) Keep The Customers In The Loop

Once your customer raises a ticket, never leave them in the dark. Always make sure you update them with the progress of the escalation. It is a nice move if your frontline agents inform the customer that the issue needs expert attention, so it is being escalated.

Now, let’s look at some best practices you can follow to keep your customers updated:

  • Inform proactively – Inform customers ahead of time about any delays and assure them that your team is handling the situation.
  • Avoid spamming – Avoid sending too many emails or messages, as this may lead to customer frustration.
  • Avoid false promises – Steer clear of false promises on issue resolution.
  • Provide estimated resolution time – If possible, provide them with an estimated date by which the ticket will be resolved.
  • Assist them – Offer them assistance if they want to directly interact with the person handling the ticket.

 

6) Enforce An Omnichannel Escalation Strategy

Many businesses now prioritize omnichannel customer support solutions. With an omnichannel approach, your customers can seamlessly engage with you. To be accurate, 80% of customers prefer omnichannel strategies due to their seamless nature.

So, why not implement the same approach in your escalation process for customer service?

Follow these simple rules to provide an omnichannel escalation policy:

  • Multi-channel ticket escalation – Enable customers to escalate a ticket from whichever channel they use, be it social media, live chat, email, phone, or any such channels.
  • Ticket path – Ensure that all tickets follow the same path irrespective of the channel from which they get raised.
  • Set automation rules – Apply automation rules to easily navigate a customer if he wants to switch between channels.

 

7) Track Your Escalation History

Regularly tracking your escalation history can help you identify if there are any loopholes in your escalation process that need to be addressed. If you are facing an increase in your ticket escalation volume, keep an eye if the following details:

  • Customer’s ticket history –  On reviewing your escalation history, look out if a particular customer escalates tickets frequently. If you come across such customer profiles, double-check with them if they use the product as advised. Alternatively, you can also recommend similar products that may suit their requirements.

There may also be instances where you may find a customer is escalating tickets for the same issue multiple times. Under such circumstances, have a personal interaction with them to identify the core of the problem. 

  • Agent’s escalation history – If you notice that any of your agents are making too many escalations, notify them about the same. Consequently, make sure that they are well informed about your SLAs, KPIs, and the products and services you offer. You can also provide additional training to such agents.
  • Recurring product issues – Filter the escalation history to see if any products raised an unusually high volume of tickets. If yes, there is a chance that the product version contains bugs or flaws that require updating.

Finally! We have gone through all the seven tips to improve your ticket escalation process.

 

Pro Tip: 

Tickets are definitely not a symbol of happy customers. So, if a ticket escalation happens, how can you take advantage of it? Our pro tip is to provide a personalized apology and collect customer feedback on how they rate their ticket escalation process. After all, 84% of consumers like to be treated more like a person rather than a number. 

Follow our pro tip and you can always work on improving your customer service escalation process.

Final Words:

Having a ticket escalation policy and its smooth functioning is essential in reducing customer churn. Now that you know the tips to improve your ticket escalation process, we hope that you will be able to manage the whole process efficiently. 

Additionally, if you want to improve the efficiency of your customer service team, equip them with Saufter. We can help them with automated workflows, agent training, and much more. What’s more, we offer customized pricing plans.

So, what are you waiting for?

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