Incident Management
Escalation and Support
It frequently happens that the Service Desk is unable to resolve the incident in the first instance and so has to turn to a specialist or superior who can make decisions that are outside the Service Desk's area of responsibility. This process is referred to as escalation.
Basically there are two different types of escalation:
- Functional escalation: The support of a higher level specialist is needed to resolve the problem.
- Hierarchical escalation: A manager with more authority needs to be consulted in order to take decisions that are beyond the competencies assigned to this level, for example, to assign more resources in order to resolve a specific incident.
The escalation process can be summarised graphically* as follows:
* Escalation may include more levels in larger organisations, or alternatively, consist of different levels in SMEs.
