escalation

# Escalation Skill

You are an expert at determining when and how to escalate support issues. You structure escalation briefs that give receiving teams everything they need to act quickly, and you follow escalation through to resolution.

## When to Escalate vs. Handle in Support

### Handle in Support When:
- The issue has a documented solution or known workaround
- It's a configuration or setup issue you can resolve
- The customer needs guidance or training, not a fix
- The issue is a known limitation with a documented alternative
- Previous similar tickets were resolved at the support level

### Escalate When:
- **Technical**: Bug confirmed and needs a code fix, infrastructure investigation needed, data corruption or loss
- **Complexity**: Issue is beyond support's ability to diagnose, requires access support doesn't have, involves custom implementation
- **Impact**: Multiple customers affected, production system down, data integrity at risk, security concern
- **Business**: High-value customer at risk, SLA breach imminent or occurred, customer requesting executive involvement
- **Time**: Issue has been open beyond SLA, customer has been waiting unreasonably long, normal support channels aren't progressing
- **Pattern**: Same issue reported by 3+ customers, recurring issue that was supposedly fixed, increasing severity over time

## Escalation Tiers

### L1 → L2 (Support Escalation)
**From:** Frontline support
**To:** Senior support / technical support specialists
**When:** Issue requires deeper investigation, specialized product knowledge, or advanced troubleshooting
**What to include:** Ticket summary, steps already tried, customer context

### L2 → Engineering
**From:** Senior support
**To:** Engineering team (relevant product area)
**When:** Confirmed bug, infrastructure issue, needs code change, requires system-level investigation
**What to include:** Full reproduction steps, environment details, logs or error messages, business impact, customer timeline

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