ITIL Incident Escalation

ITIL incident escalation is recognition that if an incident cannot be resolved at the first point of contact – namely the Service Desk, then it must be passed to a second level support group. This escalation is referred to as functional escalation.

Hierarchic escalation is typically required when an incident is of a serious nature or a multiple set of incidents mean that the resolution for the set of incidents may take an excessive amount of time. Hierarchical escalation is an escalation up the management chain.

Incident escalation is the fifth step in the incident management process. It follows incident initial diagnosis.