how to escalate a problem

[Chris Waigl]

Arnold M. Zwicky wrote:

>On Aug 30, 2005, at 9:48 AM, George Thompson wrote:
>
>
>>This is from a reply to a message to the Tech Support desk of CSA, a
>>database supplier, regarding a failure of their system:
>>
>>"Thank you very much for contacting CSA Technical Support and please
>>accept my apologies, both for the late answer and the inconvenience
>>this problem is causing you. We appreciate your report as it allows us
>>to
>>escalate problems quickly and see them resolved within a reasonable
>>amount of time.
>>"This particular problem seems to affect users around the globe and it
>>has been escalated to our development team in Bethesda, MD. As soon as
>>they come in this morning they will start to look into this and
>>hopefully resolve the issue by the end of today."
>>
>>
>
>expedite?
>
>arnold
>
>
I've seen this usage of "escalate" in the sense of "pass on from a lower
to a higher level of technical support" before.

See for example this software support page, appropriately entitled
"escalate an incident"
<http://www.roguewave.com/support/contact/escalation.cfm>:

----

Escalation

Rogue Wave® Technical Support strives to give our customers the highest
quality technical support by utilizing and maintaining industry-leading
response and customer incident resolution times. However, there may be
times when an incident may need to be escalated.

To escalate an incident to a Rogue Wave® support management, the below
information is required:

    * The support incident id number
    * The name of the Technical Support Engineer assigned to the incident
    * A brief summary of why the incident is being escalated
    * A brief explanation of the requirements needed to resolve the
      incident

*[...]**

.h++ Escalation*

*Silver* support customers can escalate an incident by either:

    * Asking the engineer assigned to the incident to escalate the
      problem to a Support Services Manager. The Support Services
      Manager will then contact the customer once the request is
      investigated and the support incident reviewed.
    * Calling the Support Services main or regional office
      <http://www.roguewave.com/support/contact/escalation.cfm#phone>
      and requesting to escalate the specific incident.

[...]


*
SourcePro® C++ Escalation
*[...]

*
Stingray® Escalation
*[...]
----

It might just be a metaphor, not an error.

Chris Waigl