The secrets of ticket escalation

In most documentation from OTRS, Jira Helpdesk and Zendesk a so called ticket escalation is explained in a step by step procedure. The first level agent should press certain buttons and then the tickets gets escalated. It seems that the overall procedure is not easy to explain so it make sense to address the workflow in a step by step tutorial.

At first, it's important to describe a naive understanding of ticket escalation.



In the example, the external customer sends a request to the organization and the first level agent submits the ticket to somebody else who is higher in the hierarchy. This kind of description is given in some of the weaker tutorials. It's a naive approach because it doesn't assumes that some kind of conflicts can be there in the escalation process. According to the chart, the term escalation means only that the first level agent sends a ping to the second level agent. And if the second level agent doesn't like to answer the ticket it goes back to the first level agent.

In the second chart, a more elaborated form of ticket escalation is presented. The position of the customer is not below the organization but above. Escalation means similar to the first case to assign a ticket to somebody who is higher in the hierarchy, but this time the definition of the hierarchy is different.



Let us describe the workflow step-by step. The process is initiated by the customer who sends a request to the organization. The customer doesn't ask for help, but he gives the organization a chance to help him. It's a very demanding customer who doesn't tolerate an excuse. Now the first level agent has two choices, he can escalate the conflict. Escalation means, to send the request back to the customer. The result is a conflict between the first level agent and the customer. Or the first level agent can decide to de-escalate the problem towards the second level hierarchy.

The definition of the term “ticket escalation” is so complicated because two opposite descriptions are available. Picture 1 has shown a pseudo-escalation process in which a conflict is not possible, while picture 2 presents a real ticket escalation which assumes and produces stress within the organisation.

Escalation button

Most normal users of ticket systems and issue trackers are interested where the escalation button is located they have to press next. The simple answer is, that in the these program no such button like “escalate a ticket” is available. Instead the process gets activated by natural language. It's a certain style of sentences a first level agents sends to the customer and to the second level agent.

The overall pipeline works the following. At first, the first level agent has to choose which concept he prefers. If the agent assumes that the first picture is valid, he will send to the second level agent a message like “Hi, there is a ticket and i want it to escalate to you.” If the agent preferes the second picture, the terminology is different and the resulting speech too.