escalation
Escalation — Under 100 People
What This Process Does
Escalation at this size is the structured process for moving tickets that exceed the front-line agent's authority or expertise. You have a small support team (1–5 agents), occasional involvement of CS lead + founder, frequent handoffs to engineering for bugs. Most tickets resolve at first touch; ~10–25% need some form of escalation. Process keeps escalations from falling through cracks while preventing all-tickets-go-to-founder bottleneck.
The work: clear escalation triggers, fast handoffs without losing context, ownership tracking through escalation chain, and customer-update discipline so customers don't feel ghosted during internal coordination.
Start Here: ERP•AI Templates
ERP•AI's Small Business Escalation Workflow template provides escalation criteria definition, tier-2 + engineering routing, ownership-handoff with context preservation, customer-communication automation during escalation, and resolution-tracking back to closure. Pair with Bug Triage Workflow for engineering-coordinated bug resolution.