For a comprehensive understanding of this app, see the Escalator User Guide (v2).
The Vendor Escalation app is located within tickets and allows an issue within a ticket to be escalated to a 3rd party. Unlike the process of escalating a ticket to a Light Agent, the Vendor Escalation app allows agents to control what information the 3rd party sees and doesn’t see. This allows the agent to keep customer information private from the 3rd party and also makes life easy for the 3rd party by only providing them with the information they need.
The app works by creating a new ticket and only the necessary information, as determined by the agent, is copied into the new ticket. The 3rd party communicates with the support agent via this new ticket. The 3rd party has no visibility of the discussion between the support agent and the customer. The original ticket from the customer is linked to the new ticket so the agent can feedback to the customer once the issue is resolved by the 3rd party. The 3rd parties can be configured into the app, so the support agent can quickly select a 3rd party to escalate to. The app can be configured to determine what ticket data from the original ticket should be selected by default to be copied into the escalation ticket, but this can be overridden on a ticket by ticket basis by the agent.
If you want the 3rd party to have complete visibility over the conversation between the customer and the support agent, and you are on the Zendesk Enterprise Plan then you can make the 3rd party a Light Agent and CC them in on the ticket. But often a customer's issue is multi-faceted and it’s a lot easier for the 3rd party to understand what is required of them if the agent separates out just the issue that concerns the 3rd party and sends that to the 3rd party as a new ticket -- this is where the Vendor Escalation app comes in.
