In this blog, we will discuss:
- What is Escalation in Customer Service
- Why is Managing Escalation Important
- Common Triggers That Cause Customer Escalations
- Fundamentals of Managing Customer Escalations
- Three Simple Steps to Managing Customer Escalations
- FAQs about Managing Customer Escalations
What is Escalation in Customer Service
Escalation means sending an issue to a higher level of support for resolution when the first contact cannot resolve it. It ensures that the right person takes over.
Managing escalations effectively requires looking at it in a way that may sound counterintuitive. The fastest way to resolve an escalation isn’t to fix the problem. It’s to fix the relationship first.
Customers do not escalate because of problems. They escalate because of broken trust.
Customers can experience major issues and never escalate, while other customers escalate over relatively minor problems. The difference is not the severity of the issue. The difference is how much trust existed in the relationship when the problem occurred.
This changes how escalations should be handled. Most customer success professionals immediately dive into problem-solving mode. They gather technical details, loop in engineering, and start building timelines for fixes. But the most effective escalation managers spend their first conversation not talking about the problem at all, but rebuilding the relationship foundation.
Explore More About: What is Interaction Analytics? A Complete Guide for Call Centers
Why is Managing Escalation Important
Managing escalations is important because we want to be able to drive our client adoption and create a better relationship. Part of managing escalation is also about empowering your Customer Success Managers (CSMs) . Do they have the support they need, the information they need, to be able to solve and remove barriers to help our customers move forward and find value. This leads to increasing expansion opportunities as well as retention, especially on a newer customer. By getting the CSMs empowered, they can help with that expansion opportunity and retention.
Mismanagement can lead to really the team losing their morale. If they are getting the help that they need to process escalations, they’re going to really feel that they can’t get their job done and they’re not going to feel successful. Low morale will lead to churn internally.
Common Triggers That Cause Customer Escalations
Today’s landscape is different. Customers are in general more impatient, more anxious, and they are angry for things that have nothing to do with you. Because of this, situations escalate faster and people become more intense.
When Customers Hear “No”
When we tell a customer no or give them bad news, when they do not hear what they want to hear, that is when things tend to escalate.
Lack of Confidence
Another reason a lot of customers escalate is when the person on the phone does not sound confident. If you do not sound sure of yourself, of what you are sharing, or of the policy, and if your explanation wavers in any way, people feel that they need to go over this person’s head and talk to someone who is more confident.
A lack of confidence or a perceived lack of confidence is one of the biggest reasons a person is going to escalate.
Suggesting Someone Above You Has More Authority
Another trigger is when you say things that suggest you have a limit and also suggest that somebody above you can do more.
For example, saying “the most I’m authorized to credit back is $50” tells the customer there is someone above you who could credit more. This immediately makes the customer want to talk to a manager.
Mentioning Supervisors or Managers
Another trigger is mentioning a supervisor’s name or title. If you say “only a supervisor could authorize this” or “only a manager could charge back,” people are going to want to go over you.
Avoid saying “the only thing I can do” or “I’m only authorized to do X.” This is negative priming and makes customers think they should escalate to a supervisor.
Fundamentals of Managing Customer Escalations
For an effective customer escalation management, customer service agents require following core components in fully mature form:
- Early Warning System
- A Well-Defined Process
- Visibility Into Status
- Goals and KPIs
- Leadership Visibility
Early Warning System
The first thing we want to do is have an early warning system. We want a really good health score so we can understand immediately when we’re seeing these red flag indicators, and also other types of alerts. It might be an email alert or a task alert letting you know that something is going on that is an early indicator there is going to be a problem.
A Well-Defined Process
A well-defined escalation process is very important to define what to do when a customer gets into escalation. Without a proper roadmap, customer service agents can only stand around hoping for escalations to de-escalate but a roadmap gives them confidence that they have a process that can help them drive through. Having that well-defined process is going to help us manage it faster and better.
Visibility Into Status
Understanding not just that the customer is in an escalation state, but where they are in the process of getting out of that escalation.
Goals and KPIs
We always want to have no escalations, but it’s not a perfect world, so we know we’re going to have escalations. How are we measuring them? Are we understanding the whys of why we’re at escalation, the revenue value, and even where we are if they’re at renewal or not, and being able to analyze that so we can fix it in the future and not continue to have the same issues again.
Leadership Visibility
Then the ability to present this to the leadership team. We’re all going to be held accountable up the chain, so making sure that we understand those goals and KPIs, we’ve done our analysis, and we understand the status in the process. Now when we go in to present to the leadership team, we’re more empowered and we can create better ways to move forward.
Three Simple Steps to Managing Customer Escalations
Three simple steps to manage any type of customer escalation, whether you are in the service industry, whether it’s product based, whether it’s software, whatever it might be. These steps are:
- Step 1: Listen and Acknowledge
- Step 2: Investigate and Find a Solution
- Step 3: Follow Up and Prevent Further Problems
Step 1: Listen and Acknowledge
Sometimes it is really difficult to just listen to that customer complain even if you know that they’re not correct, or they might be correct but you are just the messenger. You are in the job of customer care so you do need to listen, but you need to listen in the lens of where is this person coming from, what is their perspective, and what is their point of view.
You can’t listen and be condescending with uh-huh okay sure. You need to listen like you are in their shoes. Something is not right for that customer because of X Y and Z and you could see why that might be a problem for them.
If you just go okay ma’am, okay mister, yes we get it moving on and you’re trying to go quickly to the solution, the customer is going to feel it. You do need to practice listening with empathy of you being in the shoes of that customer even if it doesn’t make sense to you.
The best way to learn about people is asking them questions, understanding where people come from, asking if you’re able to travel to new places, watching TV, watching educational videos, trying to figure out if there are other people outside of the Annie bubble that might look at the world differently than Annie. It is so important to understand that for people.
Listening and acknowledging means saying all right Mrs or Mr whatever their name is, I understand that you are saying this this and this, is that correct. Getting them to repeat the information after you confirm is very effective. That means you have acknowledged and listened.
Step 2: Investigate and Find a Solution
After taking all the notes of you listening and acknowledging what they’re saying, you need to figure out what was the problem, where did the service go wrong, where did the product go wrong.
Write it out. Try to investigate, especially if it’s supposed to be handled on the phone. You probably have some sort of decision tree matrix in your call script. If you’re a smaller organization you might not have a call script and that’s okay, but you’re going to need to figure out a solution and investigate what really happened.
Whether that’s live or in a couple of days after the phone call, then you need to call back the customer or tell them live, so this is what I found out after doing research, this this and this have happened and that is why we continue to run into this problem.
Investigate and find a solution that works for the customer but also works for the business.
You need to find a solution and let the customer know you need to meet in the middle somewhere. You’re not able to give something for free depending on what the problem was, but do find a solution that works for the customer and that works for the business.
As long as your leader is allowing you to have that conversation and that dialogue to say hey Mr / Mrs customer, we know from listening and acknowledging and investigating and then finding the solution that this happened, here’s what we can offer you, does that work for you.
Allow the customer to say why or why not it works and then kind of go back and forth. It’s a little bit of selling and negotiating of what is going to be that solution for both parties.
Step 3: Follow Up and Prevent Further Problems
After you have agreed upon that, number three is follow up and prevent further problems.
Follow up to say maybe it’s a week, maybe it’s a couple of days, maybe it’s an email, but making sure that email is a personal email, has a personal touch, not just a copy and paste of a template that your organization has given you.
Really adjust that template and say hey I really enjoyed our conversation because of this this and this. Show that you listened, show that you investigated, and show that you found a solution.
Now in that email or phone call, hey how is this working so far for you, how is that solution, is it what you thought of, can we do more, can we do less. Getting that feedback and following up to prevent further issues with that customer would do wonders.
An example: you ordered a high chair and waited four months for delivery. The company didn’t listen, they didn’t acknowledge, and finally you received a high chair five months later, but there was no follow-up.
A follow-up phone call or email saying I apologize once again that your high chair was four months, five months late, how is your high chair now, is everything good, do you need anything else, can we support you any way, would have made a huge difference.
No organization is following up and asking hey how is everything going, and it can be automated. You can get AI to automate some sort of message that makes it personable, but companies are lacking that follow-up and prevention of something like that happening again.
FAQs about Managing Customer Escalations
1. How to Deal With Angry Customers
It depends on how you handle that. It depends on the culture of your organization and policies. We want most, if not all, of our customers to adhere to those policies. The best approach is to explain the why, show empathy, explain the reason, and then guide them to the next steps.
If a person, for example an insurance agent, did not renew their insurance license in time and asks for 45 more days so that they can continue to practice, the answer is no. In those cases where it is a hard no, explain the no.
2. Why Do Customer Service Calls Escalate?
Customer service calls escalate:
- When we tell a customer no or give them bad news, when they do not hear what they want to hear, that is when things tend to escalate.
- When the agent on the phone does not sound confident.
- When you say things that suggest you have a limit and also suggest that somebody above you can do more.
3. How Can You Make a Soft Sale After Resolving a Customer’s Problem?
When the problem is resolved immediately and to the customer’s satisfaction, confidence is restored and goodwill is regained. When confidence is restored and something has been done for the customer, the principle of reciprocity applies. You did something for the customer, and they may want to do something for you in return. Because the problem was fixed, they are more likely to buy. One approach is after answering the customer’s questions about billing and resolving the issue, say: “While I’ve got you on the phone, let me tell you about…” and then introduce the soft sale.
4. How to Say No to Customers while Managing Escalation?
It can be difficult to say no. A best practice is to say no without actually using the word no is via Understanding statement, Situation, and Action. Start with empathy. For example, “I realize this is frustrating,” or “I can see your point on that.” Explain the situation clearly. For example, “We are not able to renew your insurance because we are a regulated industry and you do have to take the exam and recertify.” Provide the next steps. For example, “What I can do is immediately send you links to the practice exam or exam dates.”
