Post-Purchase Support Escalation Ladder (Retention)

Post-Purchase Support Escalation Ladder (Retention)

1. 01

   Map every post-purchase contact reason to a resolution owner before the client's next peak trading week

   Pull 90 days of ticket tags from the helpdesk and group them into shipping, returns, product questions, and billing. Each group gets one named owner on the agency side and one on the client side.

2. 02

   Set the auto-resolve ceiling at a number the client can defend in a board deck

   Alhena's support concierge is marketed at auto-resolving up to 80% of inquiries, but a 40% floor with clean transcripts beats an 80% claim the client cannot audit. Agree the ceiling in writing during onboarding.

3. 03

   Route anything touching money or account access to a human within one business hour

   Refunds, chargebacks, address changes after dispatch, and subscription cancellations stay human-owned. Automation drafts the reply; a person sends it.

4. 04

   Tag every escalated ticket with the product SKU or collection it concerns

   SKU-level tagging turns the support queue into merchandising data. After 60 days, the pattern usually points at one listing description or sizing chart that needs rewriting.

5. 05

   Review the escalation log weekly against the client's refund and chargeback rate

   If escalations rise while refunds stay flat, the bot is over-triggering. If both rise, the problem is upstream in the product page or fulfilment promise.

6. 06

   Feed recurring escalation themes into the next monthly retainer report as a named line item

   Agencies that show support themes alongside conversion data get renewed on the strength of the diagnosis, not the ticket volume.

7. 07

   Re-baseline the ladder every quarter or after any platform migration

   Moving between WooCommerce, BigCommerce, or a headless build changes order data shape and breaks routing rules that were tuned to the old schema.