Customer Escalation Process
Designing an internal service ecosystem for customer success
MY ROLE
Product Owner | Service Designer & Design Strategist
TEAM
Technical Program Manager | Project Manager | Customer Support Team
SERVICES
01
Service Strategy & Design
Mapped the current service journey, identified pain points, and defined design principles.
02
Development & Blueprinting
Created a future-state service blueprint with roles, timeframes, and communication touchpoints.
03
Pilot & Handoff
Tested the process internally, documented the workflow, and prepared it for team adoption.
CONTEXT
SkillsVR, a VR-based employee training platform, needed a more reliable way to handle customer escalations as the company grew. The existing process was ad-hoc, inconsistent across teams, and relied heavily on informal communication. This caused delays in resolving issues and meant valuable customer feedback was often lost. I was tasked with designing a clear, scalable escalation process that aligned people, tools, and workflows, ensuring issues could be resolved quickly while capturing insights to improve the product.
Discover
We began by mapping the current-state escalation journey to see where delays, miscommunication, and lost feedback were occurring. This involved stakeholder interviews, process audits, and reviewing historical escalation cases.
Research Phase Approach
01
Stakeholder interviews
Collected perspectives from support product teams.
02
Process audits
Reviewed existing escalation steps, tools, and handoffs.
03
Service journey mapping
Visualized the escalation flow to spot breakdowns.
04
Escalation case review
Examined past examples to find patterns and gaps.
The escalation process was inconsistent and lacked shared criteria for ownership and prioritization, resulting in delayed resolutions and lost insights.
INITIAL HYPOTHESIS
There’s a disconnect between our team and the product team. Valuable client suggestions don’t always make it to the right people.
- Project Manager
KEY FINDINGS
1.
No defined structure
There were no tiers or formal escalation pathways, making it unclear how issues should be routed or handled.
2.
Unclear ownership and roles
Without designated contacts or responsibilities, issues often stalled or went unresolved
3.
Feedback loss
Customer suggestions and product-related insights weren't consistently captured or shared to leadership or the product team.
4.
Communication breakdowns
Gaps between the customer support and product teams slowed resolution and reduced visibility into issue states.
CURRENT-STATE SERVICE BLUEPRINT (SIMPLIFIED)
THE OPPORTUNITY
How might we design a clear, consistent, and scalable escalation process that improves resolution speed, strengthens cross-team communication, and ensures valuable customer insights are captured and acted upon?
Define
With the current-state issues clearly mapped, I worked to define what an effective escalation process should look like for SkillsVR. The goal was to create a framework that not only resolved problems faster, but also improved transparency and ensured valuable customer insights weren’t lost.
Key Areas for Improvement
Establish key structure
Formalize escalation tiers, triggers, and steps.
Clarify ownership
Assign responsibility at each stage to ensure issues keep moving along.
Improve communication
Create consistent touchpoints between support and product teams.
Capture & use feedback
Build a systematic way to collect, track, and route customer insights.
Key Users
USER TYPES
CHALLENGES
NEEDS
Customer Support
TIER 1
Handles all initial customer requests and feedback. The route product issues and requests to Tier 2.
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No defined process for complex issues creates confusion about when and how to escalate.
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Ad-hoc communication with product teams leads to uneven resolution times and quality.
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Lack of centralized tracking hinders monitoring the status of issues.
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Clear criteria and routing for complex issues streamline the process.
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A central system tracks escalated issues, increasing visibility for all.
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Defined communication guidelines ensure consistent information flow with product teams.
Project Manager
TIER 2 | LVL 1
Resolves critical issues escalated from Tier 1, prioritizing bug fixes and collaborating with developers for swift resolution.
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No structure for prioritizing escalations leads to ad-hoc responses.
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Lack of a central platform hinders collaboration with developers and support.
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Uncertainty about who resolves escalated issues slows down fixes.
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Classify escalated issues based on impact for efficient resource allocation.
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Real-time tools for efficient issue resolution and knowledge sharing with developers and support.
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Clear guidelines defining who owns and resolves different types of escalated issues.
Product Owner
TIER 2 | LVL 2
Analyze and prioritize escalated customer feedback and feature requests, balancing user needs, product strategy, & constraints.
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Receiving all customer requests directly hinders effective prioritization.
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Lack of context on requests reduces understanding of user needs.
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Absent structure and conflicting priorities make prioritization difficult.
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Tier 1 filters basic requests, escalating only complex ones with clear context.
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Access to user research and Tier 1 insights for deeper understanding of user motivations behind requests.
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A framework to evaluate requests based on feasibility, user impact, and product alignment.
Developer
TIER 3
Implement bug fixes, optimizations, and new features based on prioritized escalations from Tier 2.
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Vague escalation reports hinder understanding of issue urgency and true nature.
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Critical issues disrupt development schedules with unplanned work.
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Reactive fixes compromise quality due to limited testing.
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Standardized escalation templates with clear descriptions, expected outcomes, and context for efficient resolution.
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Dedicated bug fixing windows within development schedules.
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Robust testing and QA resources for high-quality bug fixes
FUTURE-STATE PROCESS MAP
Develop
With the future-state service blueprint defined, I moved into detailing how the process would function in practice. This meant translating the high-level design into a step-by-step workflow that clearly showed the path of an escalation from initial report to resolution.
Process Mapping
Collaborated in creating a detailed process map showing escalation entry points, decision steps, responsibilities, and handoffs between teams.
Tool Configuration
Set up JIRA with automated routing, defined timeframes for each tier and categorization, plus dedicated Slack channels for team coordination.
Pilot Test
Ran a small internal pilot to test clarity, confirm prioritization logic, and spot potential bottlenecks.
KEY FEATURES FOR NEW PROCESS
1.
Clear escalation triggers
Defined criteria for when and how to escalate an issue.
2.
Prioritization framework
Urgency and impact scoring with time goals for different issues.
3.
Role clarity
Assigned responsibilities at each step to avoid delays and confusion.
4.
Integrated communication
Dedicated Slack channels for cross-team updates.
5.
Structured feedback capture
Built-in points for documenting insights and routing them to product.
SERVICE DESIGN BLUEPRINT
Deliver
With the process validated through a small internal pilot, I prepared the materials and configurations needed for leadership to adopt and integrate it into day-to-day operations.
Process Documentation
Created clear, accessible documentation outlining each step, decision point, and responsible role.
Tool Setup
Configured JIRA workflows with automated routing, defined timeframes for each priority level, and categorization, and finalized channels for escalation communication.
Stakeholder Handoff
Shared all docs and tool configurations with the program manager and engineers for adoption and maintenance going forward.
COMMUNICATION PROCESS & FLOW
Reflect
This project reminded me how much clarity changes the way teams work together. Once we visualized the existing process, the gaps in ownership and communication became impossible to ignore — and that made designing the new flow more focused and purposeful. Running the pilot also reinforced that even a small-scale test can reveal big insights, and it’s worth taking the time to validate before rolling something out company-wide.
CHALLENGES
SUCCESSES
Post-handoff visibility
Had limited insight into how the process was adopted once it was out of my hands.
Impact measurement
Lacked a built-in method for tracking improvements in resolution time after implementation.
Clear, structured process
Designed an escalation workflow that addressed ownership gaps and made responsibilities visible to all involved.
Improved cross-team clarity
Brought alignment between support and product teams during the pilot, reducing miscommunication.
Scalable model
Created a process framework that could be adapted to other service workflows in the future.
Opportunities
01
Expand the framework
Adapt the escalation model to other service workflows beyond customer support ticketing and insight capturing.
02
Introduce automation
Add automated triage for faster routing and reduced manual work.
03
Implement performance tracking
Create dashboards to monitor escalation volume, timing, and resolution trends in real time.