Customer Success Escalations Process

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3. Technical Account Management Handbook
4. Customer Success Escalations Process

On this page

• Background:
• Objective
• Scope
• Definitions of Severity Levels
  • Escalation DRI
  • Critical and High-Level Escalations
  • Medium and Low-Level Escalations
• Initiating, Managing and Closing an Escalation
  • Opening the Escalation
  • Managing the Escalation:
  • Closing the Escalation
• TAM Manager's role in Escalations
• Support Engineering's role in Escalations
• Related Links

View the TAM Handbook homepage for additional TAM-related handbook pages.

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Background:

Escalations can take at least two different forms:

1. Account Escalation.  This occurs when the customer expresses or a GitLab team member identifies that a customer is facing a challenging situation that may or may not relate to a specific support ticket.  

2. Support Ticket Escalation.  This occurs when an open support ticket is deemed moving too slowly. 

The purpose of this handbook entry is to describe the process for account escalations.  Please see the support team escalation page for details on how to request a support ticket escalation. 

Objective

Define the process for managing account escalations and define a framework for communications, activities, and expectations for customer escalations.

Scope

This process addresses critical and high escalations for Strategic customers. This process can also apply to other segments if a strategic partnership or relationship exists. Any GitLab team member can escalate an account on behalf of the customer.

Definitions of Severity Levels

Severity Level	Description	Cadence	Levels of Involvement
Critical	Major issue(s) significantly impact customers' ability to deploy or use a solution, risk loss of or use of a solution, risk loss of a customer, or significant risk to the relationship and brand.	Daily	VP of Sales, Product, CRO, CEO, VP of Customer Success
High	Major issue(s) significantly impact a customer's ability to deploy or use a solution, risking current adoption, future growth on the account, and damage to the relationship.	Multiple times per week	VP of Sales, Product, CRO, CEO, VP of Customer Success
Medium	Issue(s) impact a customer's ability to deploy or use the product, risking current adoption and renewal.	Weekly to Bi-weekly	VP of Sales, VP of Customer Success
Low	Issue(s) impacting a customer's ability to deploy or use the product, risking customer value realization, timeline, customer satisfaction, and adoption levels.	Standard Communication	Director of Customer Success, Account Manager

• Cadence refers to the cadence of internal and external meetings and communications to the customer.
• Level of involvement defines scope of internal communication and awareness. Others can be included based on the type of issues involved.

Escalation DRI

Based on the level of the escalation, the DRI for the escalation will be:

1. Support for low or medium-level escalations
2. The TAM for high and critical escalations that are outside of a professional services project,
3. The Professional Services Project Manager for any escalation during/as a part of a professional services project.

At the beginning of the escalation, the DRI must be determined - the DRI owns the following responsibilities and key steps:

• Overall articulation of the approach to resolution, including ensuring the plan and approach is understood
• Coordination of internal GitLab and customer resources to drive troubleshooting and resolution of the issue
• Management of customer and internal communications, both async and synchronous
• Ownership of next steps, ensuring these are determined, communicated clearly with appropriate timelines to meet the level of urgency

Critical and High-Level Escalations

• The DRI is responsible for managing the account engagement (not the ticket), including:

  • Management of internal team and customer meetings for follow-up activities.

    • Note: To ensure the DRI does not slow the resolution of issues, the DRI doesn't need to be in all meetings (e.g., technical troubleshooting with the customer and support/development).
  • Driving and coordinating the escalation process internally and with the customer, including associated communications and executive-level meetings.
  • Developing and maintaining the escalation document and supporting account documents.
  • Acting as an escalation point for customer-related issues (e.g., delayed response, open actions, non-compliance installation or product use, etc.)
  • Developing the business case justification and escalation to Product for escalations related to enhancement requests
  • Posting a daily update to the dedicated escalated customer Slack channel to ensure all parties are kept updated

• Support Engineering is responsible for:

  • Collaborating with technical resources (e.g., Development, Quality Assurance, SREs, and Support Engineering staff) to drive resolution of the technical issues
  • Managing the 24x7 incident resolution and escalation process (i.e., Support Engineering, SRE, Development)
  • Supporting executive and customer calls (as needed)

Medium and Low-Level Escalations

• Support Engineering is responsible for managing Low and Medium level escalations, leveraging other teams (e.g., Technical Account Managers (TAMs), Engineering) as needed.
• Support Engineering should inform the TAM of the escalation if a TAM is assigned.
• The TAM is responsible for managing any account-related issues (e.g., delayed response, open actions, non-compliance installation or product use, etc.).

Initiating, Managing and Closing an Escalation

The following steps are to be taken by the escalation DRI:

Opening the Escalation

For Critical and High-Level escalations, create an escalation document using the Escalation Tracker Template (internal GitLab access only).

1. Copy and save the document for the individual customer and replace (CUSTOMER) with the customer name, complete the required fields
2. Create a temporary slack channel to facilitate communication internally at GitLab. This channel will remain open until the escalation is closed and should be listed in the escalation document. Name the channel #a_customername_escalation and ensure it is a public channel so that relevant parties can be easily added/find the channel.

3. Post the escalation document and the name of the temporary slack channel into the #escalated_customers. The posting to this channel should occur:

   • when the escalation is identified and created
   • when the escalation is closed or risk reduced to standard business process to manage (i.e., issue resolved and monitoring the solution)
   • The #escalated_customers channel is for awareness only and is not intended to replace the dedicated slack channel created as above, the account or support channels. Leverage the specific escalation channel created for working communications, collaborations and executive updates.

4. If requested, The VP of Product is responsible for designating Product Leaders who will be the R&D response DRIs for the escalation. That process is expected to happen in the #a_customername_escalation channel with a ping to the VP of Product stating - @david - This is a newly escalated customer, and we are looking for you to assign a Product Leader to be the R&D DRI for the response.

5. Update the customer's TAM Sentiment in Gainsight to reflect the impact of the escalation on the account.

Managing the Escalation:

• DRI owns the functions as outlined here
• Escalation document kept updated with minimum daily updates
• Daily Slack updates are posted to the designated customer escalation channel (see escalation doc for format)

Closing the Escalation

• To close an escalation, a clear alignment between GitLab stakeholders and the customer (including documentation in an issue or email) is required. Both parties need to agree the situation is resolved.

• If the customer requests an RCA and the escalation was platform-related, GitLab engineering will lead the RCA and will provide it in writing to the corresponding GitLab DRI, who is managing & closing the escalation.

• When the issue(s) related to the escalation are resolved or move into a non-escalated state:

  • Post an update to #escalated_customers with the status and resolution
  • Update the escalation document with the resolution
  • Archive the temporary Slack channel
  • Update the customer's TAM Sentiment in Gainsight to reflect the new state of the account.

TAM Manager's role in Escalations

The TAM Manager's responsibility is to ensure that the TAM is familiar with the above process and is actively managing the escalation, including the Slack Channel updates and the management of the escalation doc.

When a customer is in an escalated state, the path to resolution must continue to move forward, with both the internal stakeholders and the customer clear on current actions and next steps. The TAM manager is responsible for ensuring that this forward-motion and clear alignment is present and for stepping in and driving action or alignment where necessary.

Support Engineering's role in Escalations

See the Support Engineering Guide to Escalations for more specific information on how support manages customers in an escalated state.

Related Links

• Support Engineering Page and Support Engineering Escalation Procedures
• Product Escalation Issue Template to request Product Team support for roadmap / future needs, prioritization of enhancements and/or issues and troubleshooting of customer issues.
• Customer Health Assessment and Account Triaging