Escalation Management for coordination
By Jan Verlaan on Thursday 18 August 2011, 11:16 - Polictical Escalations - Permalink
Some customers are very demanding. They sometimes threaten to stop implementing the product or stop paying the Support and Maintenance contract. Although, from your Support and Maintenance Policy, their reported Support Issues should be closed, you could loose these customers.
A large or well-known company using your product is good advertisement to convince other candidates to buy your product. Doing a bit extra keeps the customer happy and will probably spread the news. More income could come out if it. What are you going to do?A customer not paying his Support and Maintenance contract (sometimes for good reasons) is very bad advertisement. This customer could ruin your reputation. What are you going to do?
Escalation Management
Have political escalations handled by an Escalation Manager. This escalation manager should get access to all layers of the Support and Maintenance organization.
All managers, especially those on top of a company, should redirect escalated customers to this escalation manager.
The Escalation manager operates via the Support and Maintenance Managers. All Support Analysts and Maintenance Engineers inform their manager about progress. The manager on his turn informs the Escalation manager about progress.
Escalation Policy
It is very difficult to define an escalation policy. Your Support and Maintenance Policy is the base to act upon all reported support issues. Political escalations are based on what on that moment in time is relevant for your company. When you make big water you could maybe easily loose a customer. When economic times are not that flourishing you could decide differently.
The escalation manager is the contact person for the escalated customer. Via calls with the customer he informs the customer about progress. When you have many escalating customers you would probably require several escalation managers.