Keeping your customers satisfied and offering them the best experience possible is vital to business growth and success.
An Escalation Matrix is a system within the service ticket automation platform that does just that, by identifying when an inquiry should be escalated and who should handle incidents at each escalation level.
It is designed to provide clarity to the problem, reduce wait time, and resolve tickets as soon as they reach the system. Aside from quick turnarounds, the organization maintains solid client relationships and, of course, saves money.
“Between an uncontrolled escalation and passivity, there’s a demanding road of responsibility that we must follow.”
–Dominique De Villepin (Former Prime Minister of France)
In this article, we will be discussing how you can use customer support escalation matrix to increase your ROI, as well as how to optimize it.
How an Escalation Matrix works
When a service ticket is filed, an escalation process takes place with a structured flowchart approach that specifies which departments and individuals should be contacted and in what order of hierarchy. It also determines when the issue should be escalated further to address the problem efficiently and then to acquire the required resolution.
Depending on the scenario, a dummy matrix is created of a succession of steadily rising levels of contact. The purpose of any matrix is to have a real face-to-face conversation with the most proactive support team member who can provide help at any hour of the day, without letting the system attend it.
As soon as the escalation reaches a higher level of authority, the wait time increases, and the problem remains unsolved. It’s important to prioritize and attend to every issue raised at the same time before it shifts lower in the list.
Why should one opt for an Escalation Matrix?
Escalation Matrix is a structured roadmap in order of departments and employees to contact when a service ticket is raised through ticketing system. It is a hallmark of foresight and good project management that gives the following results in the longer term:
- Elevated retention rates of customers.
- Increased loyalty, repeated purchase, and CSAT
- Lower Turnaround Time, which directly increases process efficiency.
- Organized hierarchical management flow.
Escalations: The 3 Segments
Escalations, be it any industry are segregated based on the strategy they follow in a chronological manner. Followed by a blueprint of the breakdown structure on how they approach their issues and address a plausible solution for it. Therefore, they can be divided into three segments: –
1. Hierarchical Escalation: When an occurrence of an event is forwarded to a team or person depending on their expertise or seniority inside the organization, it is referred to as hierarchical escalation.
For instance, there’s a customer on-call with a tier 1 agent who is addressing a complicated refund issue. In a hierarchical structure, if they can’t resolve the issue, the agent will escalate it to the supervisor or further on to the account manager until it is resolved.
2. Domain-Centric Escalation: A ticket will be directed to the team or individual who has the exact competence needed to resolve the significant concern, even if they aren’t the next in line hierarchically.
The pre-sales employee, for example, if A is senior to B, B would still be the best individual to deal with the situation at hand.
3. Priority Escalation: An escalation based out of priority triggers keywords that identify inquiries that are urgent and critical (measured by a metric of low, medium, and high ratings). It can be a comment, an email, or feedback by a client/customer that is connected to the relevant support team to be addressed faster in order of priority and importance.
At Kapture, this is an efficient ‘Conflict Management and Resolution Technique’ that is used to detect and competently resolve high-priority issues.
For example, a customer raises a ticket with the subject ‘Delayed Product Delivery’ as a keyword. As soon as the system recognizes the word ‘Delayed’, a trigger assigns it to ‘High’ priority and escalates it to the concerned customer support team that can resolve the issue.
How to reduce your Escalation Rate?
There are customer support teams that are able to achieve First Call Resolution (FCR) more quickly than those that have a higher escalation rate. The factors that can affect the latter can range from anything to peak hours, high call volumes, industry type, or direct requests for an escalation. However, it is in the company’s best interest to maintain a low escalation rate regardless of the factors mentioned above.
How can this be achieved?
- Know when to increase the time limit for attending a query, depending on the problem.
- Thorough understanding of your Service Level Agreement (SLA) and Service Level Objective (SLO).
- Installation of a well-scheduled ticketing helpdesk tracking system which helps in mapping the tickets that must be attended on a particular day by an assigned agent. If not, then transfer to the next one in the queue.
- If a call requires task dependency, then arrange a solution based on suggestions made by other departments.
- Enabling automatic conversational filtered options based on repeated use-cases.
- Kapture provides this unique feature where- Side conversations help in contacting 3rd party vendors by tagging them in the same ticket where the problem is raised.
- Routing Techniques are divided into four parts:
Steps to handle an Escalation:
How Customer Support Escalation Matrix helps in different industries
The Customer Support Escalation Matrix is a versatile tool across industries, fostering customer relationships and driving sales. In sectors like technology, retail, banking, and travel, it aids in understanding client needs and improving experiences. This framework enables businesses to strategize effectively by prioritizing touchpoints.
In IT, the escalation process addresses issues promptly through proper monitoring, ensuring timely resolution. Customer service escalations, stemming from miscommunication or technical glitches, require effective management to uphold a positive customer experience.
In e-commerce, the escalation matrix enhances sales and conversions. In banking, it categorizes issues for swift resolution, while in travel, it targets key leads, utilizing tailored strategies to capture attention in the digital era.
Escalation Matrix: A much-needed solution
It is the obligation of management to continuously evaluate any occurrences of ticket escalation whether it is an agitated caller, an agent who needs further training, or any other issue. All instances must be examined in order to determine the grounds for the escalation management team to proceed further.
To limit the frequency of escalated tickets, agents, executives or supervisors should also actively follow up on any previous occurrences to find methods to improve future scenarios of a similar nature.
A well-designed customer support escalation matrix can help develop techniques to install the perfect Help desk software. It also helps to avoid misunderstandings between employee roles and project goals as well as illustrates how your features create clarity within the internal team for better workflow and productivity.
At Kapture, we have developed an intelligent and contextual ‘Ticket Management System’ which is constantly evolving to provide improved accountability, delightful customer service, and increased overall customer satisfaction.
Know more about how Kapture handles escalations and delivers results at: – Ticket Management Software
Book your demo today and mark your brand’s identity in this competitive market with efficient CX software.
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