Escalations and The Escalation Management Team

The inriver escalation process provides customers and partners with the means of raising priority of the reported issues thus bringing critical/urgent problems to attention of our technical teams and leading to a faster resolution of an escalated case.

We are committed to delivering high-quality support to all our customers and partners.

Our escalation management process is designed to keep you informed of progress we make on your escalated case at every step of the way. Escalation Management Team acts as a client’s advocate.

Once the escalation process is triggered, an escalation ticket is created. Escalation Management Team takes ownership of that ticket. An Escalation Manager becomes your contact person in relation to the escalated case. The Team is responsible for:

• evaluating escalated issues (with assistance of other teams if required),
• facilitating the investigation of problems by ensuring that other technical teams involved in the process prioritize escalated cases above other standard (non-escalated/non-critical) issues,

coordinating resources needed to resolve escalations, and communicate to outline next steps and actions, that will develop throughout the escalation case. 

Process, definition and qualification of an Escalation

When can an escalation be initiated?

IMPORTANT: Before an issue can be escalated, it needs to be reported as an incident. Once an incident has been received, it will be investigated by Support team responsible for the region in which the client is registered during standard business hours for that region (unless you have special arrangements with inriver).

An escalation can be initiated when a reported issue is related to Production Environment and has a tangible/critical impact on your business, thus affecting multiple users, or there is a high risk to the business operations.

Kindly note, that an escalation cannot be created ahead of an incident reporting an issue. If this happens, escalation ticket will be closed as declined.

It is worth mentioning that before reporting an issue (extensions’ related issues, for example) it is important to check it with your partner first.

inriver always emphasises importance of following best practices regularly published and updated on the Community. Adhering to them will help you work efficiently and get the most out of PIM.

How to make an escalation request?

1. Login to inriver Community 
2. Click Get Help
3. Click Submit a ticket button
4. Select the Escalation Request form and fill in all mandatory fields
5. Please make sure you fill in the Business Impact field on the ticket
6. Click Submit

When creating an escalation ticket, it is important to fill out correctly all mandatory fields. Incorrect or missing information (for example, a reference to a wrong incident reporting the initial problem or lack of “Business Impact” information) may delay the resolution or result in an escalation being declined.

There may be other factors that will impact our decision on whether to accept a specific escalation or decline it. If an escalation ticket is declined, you are going to get a reason for our decision.

What to expect during an escalation?

An escalation process is triggered to ensure conclusion of the issue. You will be contacted by an Escalation Manager to confirm the receipt of an escalation ticket and information about our status and the next steps.

Escalation Manager will coordinate in the investigation/resolution process. The Escalation manager will keep customers, partners and internal stakeholders updated until the case is resolved or inriver decides to conclude the escalation.

We continuously prioritize our cases to be able to always ensure that the most business-critical issues get the attention they need to be handled.

When an escalation can be closed?

An escalation will be considered closed if:

1. The client/partner have agreed that the case has been resolved.
2. When an escalation is declined.
3. If analysis of the reported issue has identified that it is the result of the client/partner not following inriver best practices.
4. If the root cause of the issue is determined to be outside of inriver's core system - turn to partner to get help.
5. The investigation continues at a pace acceptable for the client/partner.
6. No response has been received from client/partner after troubleshooting steps and reminders.

Further reading

Escalating a bug report