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Escalation Email Triage

Customer Success

What it tests

Communication quality, prioritization judgment, and ability to de-escalate under pressure in writing

Format

  1. 1Candidate receives an inbox of 8 mock emails: ranging from a VIP executive furious about an outage, to a low-touch customer confused about billing, to an internal Slack from a frustrated AE
  2. 2Task: triage and prioritize all 8, draft responses to the top 3, and write a one-line action note for the remaining 5
  3. 3Responses are evaluated for tone, accuracy (using a provided product FAQ), and escalation judgment
  4. 4Live debrief: candidate walks through their prioritization logic and gets one email rewritten in real-time with feedback

What to look for

  • Do they correctly identify the executive outage as highest priority, or does length/complexity of email mislead them?
  • Are responses empathetic and concrete, or generic and defensive?
  • Do they know when to escalate to engineering vs. handle internally?
  • In the rewrite exercise, do they take feedback well and improve quickly, or double down?

Adaptation guide

Customize the inbox to reflect your actual customer personas (enterprise vs. SMB, technical vs. non-technical). Include one email in a foreign language or with heavy jargon to test composure.

Full description

Format:

  1. Candidate receives an inbox of 8 mock emails: ranging from a VIP executive furious about an outage, to a low-touch customer confused about billing, to an internal Slack from a frustrated AE
  2. Task: triage and prioritize all 8, draft responses to the top 3, and write a one-line action note for the remaining 5
  3. Responses are evaluated for tone, accuracy (using a provided product FAQ), and escalation judgment
  4. Live debrief: candidate walks through their prioritization logic and gets one email rewritten in real-time with feedback

Time: 60 minutes

What to look for:

  • Do they correctly identify the executive outage as highest priority, or does length/complexity of email mislead them?
  • Are responses empathetic and concrete, or generic and defensive?
  • Do they know when to escalate to engineering vs. handle internally?
  • In the rewrite exercise, do they take feedback well and improve quickly, or double down?

Adaptation: Customize the inbox to reflect your actual customer personas (enterprise vs. SMB, technical vs. non-technical). Include one email in a foreign language or with heavy jargon to test composure.