| > It’s a problem when the levels don’t properly escalate stuff they don’t understand. This is the real human psychology trap. By definition, L1 doesn't understand anything it can't handle. Unfortunately, at many companies L1 is also yelled at for escalating too many cases. Consequently, the internalized message for L1 to not get yelled at is "Juggle the ticket you don't understand convincingly, until the customer abandons interaction from frustration." A few anti-patterns I've seen in most support shops: 1) Bad KPIs / no post-hoc sampling and review. Without regular, random, higher-level sampling and classification of how tickets were handled, there's no signal that support is technically botching a large % of incoming tickets. 2) Disincentives to escalation, even when it's a true positive escalation that should be. IMHO, support should be incentivized to escalate true positives. 3) Failure to upskill support agents and build mix-of-expertise within the support function. 4) To 3, failure to pay support for the value they're creating. In a sane world, a few of your highest skilled support people will be paid like developers, because they are. |