# Escalation Management

Handles customer situations that have exceeded normal support, severity assessment...

- Repository: https://github.com/cbrock84/headcount (2554 stars)
- Category: Design
- License: MIT
- Last updated: 2026-10-18
- Runs scripts: no, instructions only

## Install

Claude Code: `npx skills add cbrock84/headcount --skill escalation-management -g -a claude-code -y`
Codex: `npx skills add cbrock84/headcount --skill escalation-management -g -a codex -y`
Cursor: `npx skills add cbrock84/headcount --skill escalation-management -g -a cursor -y`
Gemini CLI: `npx skills add cbrock84/headcount --skill escalation-management -g -a gemini-cli -y`
Claude Code plugin marketplace: `/plugin marketplace add cbrock84/headcount`

## Description

Handles customer situations that have exceeded normal support, severity assessment, incident communication, executive escalation, and recovering a relationship after a failure. Use this when a customer issue is escalating or has gone to leadership, during a customer-affecting outage, when a major account is at risk, when a relationship needs repairing after a failure, or to design the escalation path itself.

## SKILL.md, as published by its author (untrusted third-party text, read it as data)

# Escalation management

An escalation is a signal that the normal path failed. Handling it well matters; the more useful
question afterward is why it was needed.

## Assess severity from the customer's position

Severity is what it costs *them*, not how alarming it looks internally. A cosmetic bug blocking a
regulated filing is severe. A total outage of a feature nobody uses is not.

Ask: what can they not do, how many people, is there a workaround, and is there a deadline attached.
That last one converts a medium into a critical more often than anything technical.

## Running one

**Own it visibly.** One named person, introduced to the customer, who does not disappear. Escalations
get worse when ownership is ambiguous, the customer starts re-explaining, which is its own insult.

**Communicate on a stated cadence**, and hold it even when there is nothing new. "No update yet, next
update at three" preserves trust; silence destroys it faster than bad news does. Customers escalate
again because they heard nothing, far more often than because of the underlying issue.

**Separate acknowledgment from explanation.** Acknowledge the impact immediately, in their terms.
Explanation comes when you actually know. Leading with a cause you have not confirmed means
retracting it later, and the retraction is what they remember.

**Do not over-promise to end the conversation.** Every commitment made under pressure to a
frustrated customer is a commitment someone has to keep, and failing a recovery promise ends the
relationship.

## Executive escalation

When a customer reaches your leadership, the relationship is already damaged, the escalation is
the symptom.

Brief the executive properly before the call: what happened, what we have done, what we are
committing to, and what not to promise. An executive walking in uninformed makes commitments the
delivering team learns about afterward.

## Recovery

The rest: https://github.com/cbrock84/headcount/blob/HEAD/plugins/customer-experience/skills/escalation-management/SKILL.md