Sometimes a customer will ask to speak to a manager right from the get-go but sometimes, after a pretty extensive back and forth with you, they’ll ask to be escalated. Speaking to a manager helps people feel as though they’ve actually been heard, instead of just getting lost in the sea of customer feedback. Similarly, people that ask to speak to “higher ups” usually are doing so because they care. If they didn’t care, they wouldn’t be spending even more of their time to speak to a manager and vent their frustrations; they would just be walking out.

So, when a customer asks to talk to a manager, we recommend that you either directly let them talk to your manager, if you have a policy in place already, follow that. Otherwise:

1. Notify your manager that you have a customer that wants to talk to them and offer context around what you’ve already offered to or talked to the customer about.
2. Ask your manager how they would like to handle it, either by them taking over, them advising you on a ticket, passing it to another employee (and presenting it as escalation to the customer), or telling the customer that no manager is available.
3. Respond to the customer.

If you’re letting them know that you are escalating to someone else, whether that be an actual manager or just your colleague, here’s a great template to use:

Hey there,

Thanks for expressing your thoughts here. I can see how that would be frustrating for you and you’d want to get a second opinion from someone other than me. I’m going to send your ticket along to [name], who would love to hear a little bit more about what’s been going on and how they can help.

Just so you know, I have provided some context and explanation to [name] so that they have a bit of an understanding before speaking with you. If you would like to provide additional insights that you think I might have missed, please do.

Thanks!

If you are moving forward by telling the customer that you do not currently have a manager available, the best tactic here would be to do something similar that you would when sharing bad news:

Hi,

Thanks very much for following up about this and sharing your perspective here. I can see how that would be frustrating for you and you’d want to get a second opinion from someone other than me. Right now, though, I don’t have a manager available, so we will have to keep working through this together.

So, given that, I was just wanted to reiterate what I perceive the issues to be: [list out the issues as you see them, and your proposed solutions]. Does that all sound right or is there something that I’m missing? I want to make sure that we are on the same page moving forward, because I know this has been frustrating for you.

Thanks!