Introduction
For high-severity risks, swift and decisive action can make the difference between retaining or losing a customer. Establishing escalation paths ensures that critical accounts receive immediate, high-priority attention from the right teams, including leadership when necessary. This article will guide you through setting up escalation paths for high-severity risks, so your team can provide timely support and address serious issues before they impact customer satisfaction and retention.
Step 1: Define Escalation Criteria for High-Severity Risks
Start by identifying the specific criteria that warrant escalation, ensuring that only high-severity risks trigger this response.
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Health Score Drops Below Critical Threshold: Define a critical health score threshold that, when breached, signals an urgent need for intervention. Use Scorecards to monitor and set automated triggers when health scores fall below this level, indicating a serious risk of churn.
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Multiple Unresolved Support Issues: Set escalation criteria for accounts with an increasing volume of unresolved support tickets or repeated complaints. Use Timeline to track and log support interactions, helping you identify accounts experiencing persistent issues.
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High-Value or Strategic Accounts: For high-ARR or strategic accounts, define escalation criteria that prioritize their retention. For instance, any sign of disengagement or dissatisfaction in key accounts may warrant immediate attention. Segment these accounts in Dashboards to visualize and monitor high-priority accounts separately.
Step 2: Configure Automated Escalations with Rules Engine
Automating escalations with Gainsight’s Rules Engine ensures that high-severity risks are addressed immediately, without delays caused by manual processes.
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Set Up Rules to Trigger Escalation CTAs: Use Rules Engine to automatically generate CTAs for high-severity risks. For example, a rule can trigger an escalation CTA if a customer’s health score falls below a critical threshold or if multiple support tickets remain unresolved.
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Assign High-Priority Escalation Tasks to Leadership: Configure escalation rules to assign critical tasks to senior CSMs or leadership, ensuring that key decision-makers are involved for high-risk accounts. Use CTA Priority Settings to indicate the urgency and assign appropriate resources for follow-up.
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Send Real-Time Notifications to Key Stakeholders: Ensure that stakeholders are notified immediately when an escalation occurs. Use Email Assist to send automated escalation alerts to CSMs, managers, and executives, keeping everyone informed and aligned on urgent cases.
Step 3: Standardize Follow-Up Actions for Escalated Accounts
Establishing a consistent follow-up process ensures that every escalated account receives thorough, high-touch engagement to resolve issues effectively.
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Use Playbooks to Guide Escalated Engagements: Create specific playbooks for escalated accounts that outline steps for CSMs and leadership to follow, such as arranging an executive call, offering additional support resources, or providing a tailored solution. Configure Playbooks to deploy automatically with each escalation CTA, ensuring a consistent approach to urgent issues.
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Log All Escalation Actions in Timeline: Document each step taken to resolve escalated issues using Timeline, creating a comprehensive record of actions and outcomes. This transparency helps ensure accountability and allows other team members to stay updated on the status of high-severity accounts.
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Hold Post-Escalation Reviews for High-Value Accounts: After resolving escalated issues, conduct a review with leadership and CSMs to evaluate the outcome and gather insights. Use these findings to refine escalation criteria and improve risk response strategies in the future.
Next Steps for Success
With automated escalation paths in place, your team can respond quickly to high-severity risks and provide tailored support for critical accounts. For additional insights into managing moderate risks, refer to the article Deploy Playbooks to Address Common Risk Scenarios.
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