Escalation management: Best practices + how to manage it

Maintaining a high first contact resolution rate is a reliable way to improve customer satisfaction. However, your team won’t be able to solve every ticket immediately, and you must have a plan for when your support agents need backup.

Escalation management helps your support team deliver good customer service when navigating difficult tickets or communicating with upset customers. Read on to learn more about this important support strategy and how you can implement it in your business.

More in this guide:

• Types of escalation management
• Why is escalation management important in customer service?
• Common challenges of escalation management
• How to set up a customer escalation management process
• 8 escalation management best practices
• Frequently asked questions
• Excel in escalation management with Zendesk

Types of escalation management

Escalation management isn’t one-size-fits-all; there are several approaches you can take to handle customer issues effectively. Here are a few of the most common.

Functional escalation management

Functional escalation management involves transferring tickets to support agents or teams with specialized knowledge. For example, a customer may contact your support team with a technical product question. In that situation, the initial support agent will likely have to transfer the ticket to a different agent with the proper skill set to solve the issue.

Hierarchical escalation management

Hierarchical escalation management is when a customer gets transferred to an employee with higher decision-making authority. This could be a situation in which a frustrated customer asks to speak to a supervisor or if the customer wants something that the initial support agent isn’t allowed to give—like a refund or policy exception. Hierarchical escalation can also help teams with de-escalation.

Automated escalation management

Automated escalation management uses technology and pre-defined rules to route issues based on triggers. For example, most support teams have service level agreements (SLAs)—or written standards for customer support. If a support ticket remains unresolved for a period that violates the company’s SLA, automated escalation would automatically send the ticket to a more qualified team or higher level of authority.

Teams can also use chatbots for this escalation path. Say a customer is interacting with the technology and can’t find an answer. In this case, the chatbot can automatically escalate the ticket to a human support agent with the full context of the situation. These approaches help prevent issues from falling through the cracks and ensure teams provide consistent service.

Priority escalation management

Priority escalation management solves issues based on urgency or impact on business operations. This can include situations where high-priority customers need assistance or when a product glitch affects multiple users or business functions. Priority escalation helps businesses balance critical concerns with standard support tickets.

Why is escalation management important in customer service?

Escalation management is important in customer service because it can improve customer satisfaction and help build long-term customer relationships.

To truly understand how important escalation management is, we first need to touch on the customer experience (CX). CX refers to every interaction a customer has with a business, from browsing product pages to contacting customer support.

Companies with an outstanding CX are more likely to attract and retain customers—in fact, according to Zendesk Benchmark data, 3 in 4 customers will spend more with businesses that provide a good CX.

Escalation management is a critical aspect of the wider CX picture, as customers don’t want to have lengthy conversations with your support team. Solving their issues promptly—even when your team needs to escalate tickets—goes a long way toward keeping your customers happy, giving them a positive experience, and forging lasting relationships.

Common challenges of escalation management

Escalation management runs smoothly when your team is experienced and you have the right strategy—but it can take time to reach that point. Some common challenges businesses face include:

• Insufficient training: If your team is starting escalation management from scratch, you need to conduct comprehensive training to ensure their confidence and knowledge. Unprepared agents could lead to angry customers.
• Poor communication: An escalated ticket should have all the information the next support agent needs for a smooth transition. If the agent asks the customer to repeat themselves, it can result in a poor CX and lengthy resolution time.
• Lack of clear protocols: Customer problems rarely follow a pre-defined script. If your team is unsure of the proper protocols—especially when dealing with unique challenges—it could throw a wrench into your support system and result in bad customer service.
• Over or under escalation: Even if your team understands your escalation protocols, they could still miss situations that call for it. If agents escalate issues prematurely or fail to escalate a ticket when needed, your CX could suffer.
• Lack of monitoring: Monitor team performance and customer service metrics to ensure your escalation management performs as intended. Without this context, teams could be underperforming without knowing it.

Beyond the above, check in with your employees and managers to ensure they have the resources they need to perform escalation management effectively.

How to set up a customer escalation management process

Establishing a customer escalation management process is essential for delivering consistent, high-quality customer service. Here are a few ways you can do so.

Determine your needs

Start your escalation management journey by assessing your needs and challenges. Look at customer service performance to identify any bottlenecks in your support system, common customer complaints, or CX areas where you may be falling short.

Also, be mindful of what mediums your customers use to contact you and ensure your strategy can accommodate them—whether over the phone, live chat, messaging, or email.

Identify your levels of service

Next, identify service levels that correspond to different types of customer issues and their complexity. One example is support tiers—a hierarchical approach for escalation management that increases based on the level of support needed.

Whether you adopt this method or develop your own, ensure each service level has clearly defined responsibilities, expectations, and target resolution times.

Create an escalation framework

Now that you’ve developed your levels of service, you need a detailed framework that outlines your escalation process. This should be a comprehensive plan with the exact steps, criteria, and procedures for escalating issues.

Let’s say a general customer support representative encounters a customer issue they can’t resolve, either due to a lack of knowledge or authority. An escalation framework gives them information on how to identify these issues, where to route the tickets, and how to communicate with the customer throughout the process. The more detailed your plan, the more prepared your team will be.

Implement the process

Roll out your escalation management process and ensure all team members understand their roles, responsibilities, and escalation criteria. Your agents may experience a bit of a learning curve, but there are some actions you can take (which we will highlight below) to help the escalation process run smoothly.

Analyze and improve

Finally, regularly monitor the effectiveness of your escalation process. Track key metrics like customer satisfaction (CSAT) scores, resolution times, and escalation rates. Use this information to identify any bottlenecks, areas of improvement, and employee training opportunities.

8 escalation management best practices

You may encounter a few hiccups as you establish new escalation management techniques. Here are eight best practices to help you implement your strategy.

1. Embrace AI and automation

AI and automation can streamline business processes and help teams do more with less—especially in customer service applications. In fact, per the Zendesk Customer Experience Trends Report 2025, 90 percent of CX Trendsetters—CX leaders who have fully embraced AI in their operations—think AI will resolve 8 in 10 issues without a human within the next few years.

You can dip your toe into automated escalation management with omnichannel routing. This method uses automation to direct customer tickets to the right support agent based on factors like agent status, capacity, skill set, and ticket priority.

It works across channels, meaning you can connect your customers to the right agent at the right time over the medium they prefer. If your customers are connected to a knowledgeable agent the first time, it will reduce your need to escalate.

When you’re ready to dive head-first into the AI deep end, enlist the help of AI agents. These advanced bots can:

• Autonomously answer customer questions

• Process refunds

• Troubleshoot technical tasks

• Track orders

• Surface helpful resources

If the AI agent can’t resolve the customer request, it can send the ticket to a human agent with the full context of the situation. With AI agents in your corner, you can reduce ticket escalations—and streamline them when customers need to speak with a human.

2. Adopt a customer-first mindset

Having a customer-first mindset —sometimes called customer obsession— means being hyper-focused on creating a better CX. With this mindset, organizations focus on their customers’ needs rather than products or profits.

Customer-first businesses always seek to optimize—whether that means designing a more efficient support structure to reduce total escalations, updating their product based on trending feedback, or identifying and rectifying problems before they need to be escalated.

3. Optimize your resources

A simple way to reduce ticket escalations is by having fewer support tickets—and you can do that by fostering customer self-service and optimizing your resources. This can include:

• Customer portals where they can submit and manage support requests
• A comprehensive knowledge base filled with how-to and instructional articles

• Community forums where customers can connect over similar issues

• FAQ pages

When you empower your customers to solve their problems independently, you reduce escalations and free up your support team.

4. Define service level agreements

As mentioned earlier, SLAs are written standards for customer support. They act as customer service guarantees that define the quality, availability, or timeliness of the service provided.

Establishing these guidelines can help you monitor your performance and set customer expectations. For example, if you establish that you will reply to emails within 20 minutes, customers won’t expect a reply immediately.

5. Use QA to maintain team efficiency and identify areas of improvement

Engaging in customer service quality assurance (QA) is important for maintaining team efficiency. Regular QA assessments—either by hand or with the help of automation—can help identify top-performing agents and those who may need additional guidance.

By analyzing this information, managers can spot trends in escalation management and provide targeted coaching to improve team performance.

6. Create team training opportunities

Monitoring QA can help you analyze support agents individually, but you should also use that information to create teamwide training opportunities.

This might include refresher training on escalation best practices, specialized training for handling different escalations, or curated direction on recent trends. Also, focus on all types of customer service skills, from technical knowledge to empathy and communication.

7. Document and share performance

As you progress through your escalation management journey, keep detailed records of performance, outcomes, and even what works with customers and what doesn’t. This information can be invaluable to improvement and can help you excel in your escalation strategy.

8. Connect with customers

At this point, you should already be operating from a customer-first perspective, but also take time to connect with your customers. Consider conducting surveys like Customer Effort Score (CES) or general email check-ins to learn more about their thoughts on your escalation process.

You should also engage with them during the process to make them feel heard and let them know you are resolving their issue as quickly as possible.

Frequently asked questions

PURE Insurance

PURE delivers innovative internal support with a boost from Assist

“Zendesk helps reduce friction in our ticket escalation process by empowering teams to collaborate and share information smoothly, which creates a better experience for agents, brokers, and customers.”

Howard Muhlstein

Vice President of Infrastructure Services

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Excel in escalation management with Zendesk

Escalation management is a strategy businesses need to master to keep customers happy in every support interaction. While you could conduct escalations with your own system, partnering with Zendesk will take your strategy to the next level.

Zendesk Service capabilities like omnichannel routing and AI agents can help you harness advanced technologies to streamline escalation management and help build long-term relationships with your customers.