up one level
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2018-03-19

Escalate from Support to Sales

By author Morgan Jassen

Recently a friend of mine heard someone (frustrated with Software Technical Support service) state (paraphrasing): '... I would like to escalate this case from tech support to a sales case, so that it becomes taken more urgently and progressed towards resolution more quickly..."

I chuckled at first, but then stopped. Because this person knows how it works. ^This.

This is how it works -- if support doesn't meet expectations, then escalating to sales will work in a typical American IT Services provider company. Because you then tell sales you are thinking of canceling. And 90% of the time the entire support organization reports to the head of sales, and an other 9% of the time the head of support works under a sales paradigm.

The thing that made me chuckle is the phrasing. This is the first customer I can recall who put it so bluntly, and obviously well understands that support reports to sales.

(Other customers may insist that support fix it and that support provide excellent service, and ask it to be escalated up through the support chain. But ^this person knows that this means escalating it to sales. They essentially want to skip the escalation through the support management chain even, and just go higher -- go to sales)


[2018-09-01 edit: Moved from https://i̶n̶v̶e̶s̶t̶o̶r̶w̶o̶r̶k̶e̶r̶.̶c̶o̶m̶/2018.php?2018-03-19#2018-03-19 to https://i̶n̶v̶e̶s̶t̶o̶r̶w̶o̶r̶k̶e̶r̶.̶c̶o̶m̶/blog2018/2018/03/19/escalate-from-support-to-sales/ ]
[2018-Nov. Note: This blog post was republished in November 2018 at https://i̶n̶v̶e̶s̶t̶o̶r̶w̶o̶r̶k̶e̶r̶.̶c̶o̶m̶/2018/ ]