Beginning March 1, 2022, the AskIT Service Desk will be adopting a new and improved unified escalation process for all caregiver-initiated escalations of Incidents and Requests. This process will standardize how all Incidents and Requests are escalated, eliminating legacy team-specific escalation processes which may have existed in the past. Below are outlined key process details.
Why is the escalation process changing?
- A common and standard escalation framework is necessary to ensure a consistent and high-quality caregiver experience.
- This change is necessary to align escalations to SLAs and resolution or fulfilment expectations.
- This will enable mature escalation capabilities to be built (automation, self-service, etc), better reporting and business insights, and reductions in escalation defects.
What are the benefits of the new unified escalation process?
- Escalations will be facilitated using ServiceNow Playbook functionality to ensure consistent handling and process adherence.
- All escalations will be easily identifiable through multiple reportable mechanisms− standardized tagging, short description elements, and work notes enabling teams to build dashboards, reports, and alerting based on their needs.
- The new escalation process will enable teams to identify and take action on escalations, while also limiting if and when SMS paging occurs to regulate paging scenarios and reduce paging fatigue.
- This change enables operational teams to quickly identify tickets that have been escalated, as well as which tickets have been escalated multiple times.
- Standard escalation reasons now allow for better identification, tracking, and management of key escalation drivers.
What is changing?
- All existing/legacy escalation processes will be replaced with this new escalation process, which will be the only escalation process used by AskIT.
- This new process strives to consolidate and build upon the legacy processes, facilitating escalations in a manner that meets the needs of all teams.
- Caregiver-initiated escalations will not result in the change of Priority on a ticket for the sole purpose of triggering an escalation. Priority will only be adjusted if the facts of the case have changed.
Escalation Process Summary Steps
- All
escalations will first be evaluated for the presence of four exception
criteria, with supporting documentation and detail captured during the
escalation process:
- New or transferring caregiver
- VIP requesting escalation
- Patient care Impact
- Significant risk to health, safety, or financials
- Incident
escalations will be evaluated based on adherence to SLA.
- If the SLA has not yet been breached, without the presence of valid exception criteria, the Incident will not be escalated.
- Valid escalations due to a breached SLA or the presence of valid exception criteria will result in several changes to the Incident record (justification documentation, short description modification, tag added). Additional evaluation of the circumstances (time of day, ticket priority, exception criteria, caregiver impact) will determine if it is also appropriate to send a SMS Page via ServiceNow Notify to the Primary IS On-call.
- Additional processes have been built to handle repeat escalations to include how often an escalation may be triggered, with details on hierarchical notifications to raise awareness of unresolved escalations.
- Request
escalations will be evaluated based on whether or not the request is
unfulfilled after its estimated completion date.
- If the requested item is not past the estimated completion date, without the presence of valid exception criteria, the Request will not be escalated.
- Valid escalations due to breached estimated completion date or the presence of valid exception criteria will result in several changes to the associated SCTask(s) record(s) (justification documentation, short description modification, tag added). Additional evaluation of the circumstances (exception criteria present, no workarounds, and unable to wait until next business day) will determine if it is also appropriate to send a SMS Page via ServiceNow Notify to the Primary IS On-call.
- Additional processes have been built to handle repeat escalations to include how often an escalation may be triggered, with details on hierarchical notifications to raise awareness of unresolved escalations.
- Note: SMS Paging on Request escalations placed outside of business hours have intentionally constrained criteria to limit SMS Pages for non-critical items.
What can operational support teams do to prepare for this change?
- Ensure your teams are setup within ServiceNow to receive SMS Pages.
- Incorporate the new escalation mechanisms (escalation tag, escalation short description, escalation work note) into your existing team processes, dashboards, reports, etc, where necessary.
- Socialize this change with your team as necessary.
More info
Please reach out to Ami Worcester, exec. director IS service transformation, or Angela Sanders, exec. director, AskIT Service Desk, with any questions or concerns.