Functional Escalation - levels?

[bobduncan76]

Hello,

Was reading some ITIL service desk processes. The author referred to Functionally escalated request as '2nd Line'

Is this correct according to ITIL & where can I get a reference for that?

I understood that Functional Escalation was horizontal & all those groups are considered to be at the same level.

Please advise.

Thank you,

Bob.

[matrejekm]

Hello,

You can talk about different kind of levels.

In this case we use "levels of support":
Level 1 - Service Desk [role: catch, dispatch/functional escalation to Level 2, first line resolution]
Level 2 - Engineers [role: resolution, functional escalation to level 3 or other level 2 group]
Level 3 - Engineers & Architects [role: resolution of complicated problems, design new implementations, functional escalation, etc...]
Of course you can build more levels if you want [on this forum you can find even Level 0 - Self support webportals]

On each level you can have different groups [LAN, WAN, SAP, etc...].
Functional escalation is to find a proper group to solve the issue.

A request can go through groups [functional escalation] until it is resolved by a proper group.

Skilled/matured ITIL organization mitigates steps number a request need to "bounce" before it is solved.

Top-down escalation you use e.g. when a request is to breach SLA, or target group for functional escalation cannot be established [process gap].

Escalation is described in Incident Management chapter in Service Support book [if I remember correctly].

regards,

[rjp]

Functional escalation: Transfering an incident to another person or group based on skills or resources required. The convention of using number - level 1, level 2, etc., - may either refer simply to the number of transfers or the level of expertise. (The concepts overlap)

Hierarchical escalation: Calling on a higher level of management to intervene in the resolution process to resolve some procedural difficulty, or to authorise the allocation of extra resources, or to make a judgement call about priorities where there is a conflict. (Or even deal with a client that is trying to bully their way to the front of the queue).

Or in a nutshell: Functional = Skills, Hierarchical = Authority