What decision does the Escalation Grid frame?
How the items a Digital FTE must not handle alone reach the people who must. The always-escalate list says what escalates; the grid says to whom, how fast, and in what form, which is the part most teams leave to chance and then discover in an incident. On ftes.ai the grid is written into the remit and the routing, and each escalation appears in the receiver's brief with the summary attached. The frame applies to every role, from a Customer Support FTE's complaints to a Recruiter FTE's flagged candidates to a Finance Controller FTE's disputes.
The grid is a table. Every row is a trigger; every column must be filled.
What are the columns?
Trigger: the condition, stated so that the FTE can recognise it, a refund request, a mention of a regulator, a candidate the scorecard flagged, a payout with an unexplained difference over a threshold. Receiver: a named person or a named rota, never a team name without an owner; with a deputy for absence. Urgency: next brief, meaning it waits for the receiver's morning brief, or now, meaning it reaches the receiver through the channel the remit names, with an out-of-hours receiver where the trigger can occur out of hours. Summary standard: the four parts, what was asked, what the FTE found in its sources, why it did not resolve on its own, and a suggested next step, plus any role-specific attachment, the thread, the records, the scorecard.
Distress, safety, and legal triggers are always now; most others are next brief.
- Trigger: recognisable condition
- Receiver: named person or rota, with a deputy
- Urgency: next brief, or now with an out-of-hours receiver
- Summary: four parts plus role-specific attachment
How does the worked example read, with the inputs left blank?
Role: Customer Support FTE for [property]. Row: refund or credit request; receiver [name], deputy [name]; urgency next brief; summary four parts plus the order record. Row: complaint about service; receiver [name]; urgency next brief unless the message contains [terms], then now; summary four parts plus the full thread. Row: legal, safety, or regulator language; receiver [name], out of hours [rota]; urgency now via [channel]; summary four parts plus the thread. Row: customer in distress; receiver [rota]; urgency now via [channel]; summary four parts, no other action. Row: ticket with no source in the knowledge base; receiver [name] as a gap; urgency next brief; summary the question and the search performed. Reviewed by [manager] and [compliance lead] on [date].
An empty receiver cell is the most common gap, and it is the one that becomes an incident.
Why is the summary standard fixed?
Because the value of an escalation to the receiver is the context, and context arrives reliably only when its shape is fixed. A person who receives what was asked, what was found, why it did not resolve, and a suggested next step can act without reopening the inbox, re-asking the customer, or re-running the search. A person who receives a reassigned ticket does the FTE's work again. The remit makes the four parts a rule, and an escalation that arrives without them is sent back to the FTE as incomplete, which is a send-back reason the manager reads like any other.
The same shape in every role means a manager reading the workforce view reads every escalation the same way.
How is escalation quality read at the review?
Two numbers per role in the Performance tab, alongside the volume by trigger: the share of escalations whose summary met the standard, and the receivers' send-back reasons for the ones that did not. A rising volume on one trigger is a signal about the function, a knowledge gap, a policy problem, a season, not about the FTE. A falling summary quality is a signal about the remit or the memory. A trigger that never fires may be missing from the FTE's recognition rules, or may not occur; check which. The grid is reviewed quarterly with the remit and after any incident, and rows are added; rows are not removed.
Escalation quality is one of the three measures the head-of-support persona piece recommends tracking from week one.
How is the frame applied?
Write the grid with the people who will receive the escalations, in the hour after the remit's three lists are written. Name every receiver and deputy; agree the out-of-hours rota for the now rows before the first connection. Enter the routing in the remit. In the first month, check every escalation against the summary standard and send back the ones that fail. At the first monthly review, read volume by trigger and summary quality, and add any row the month revealed. Repeat quarterly, and after any incident.
The escalation list template in the library gives the starting rows for each catalogue role.