IT Problem Management

7.4. Escalation

Escalation is the process of transferring responsibility for resolving a problem from one agent to another agent or to a pool of agents. Escalation occurs when one agent has completed all the work that he or she can on the problem and there is still work to be done. Many service centers refer to this as routing instead of escalation, choosing to use the term escalation for nonroutine transfers. We will use the term escalation to refer to both routine and nonroutine transfers.

Routine transfers imply predefined rules and guidelines. For routine escalation to work effectively, those guidelines and rules must be well defined, firmly in place, and constantly monitored and tuned. The overall performance of the service center is greatly ...