It sounds obvious, but do you have an escalation procedure for how to handle a customer service issue? If not, it's a great idea to spend some staff time developing one.

Every business ought to have a set of rules and expectations on how to handle a customer satisfaction or service and support issue. From frontline customer service personnel through executive management, every member of your customer-facing team should know what they can and can't commit to on behalf of the company and when and how to appropriately escalate a problem internal for ultimate resolution.

I prefer processes like this to identify the employee by position and set timeframes for notification and handoff of the customer issue. The thought behind this is to have a ready plan for notification and escalation that can take place external to the customer's request for escalation and in many instances head off a greater problem with customer satisfaction than may otherwise occur.

The bottom-line is your business needs contingencies all employees are familiar with and support. Handling customer issues ranks among the top. The better prepared you are to escalate a problem, the better you're prepared to resolve an issue and take a potentially bad customer interaction and turn it into a trust and loyalty building event.

Do you any stories to share on how having (or not having) an escalation procedure better or worse served a customer?