Escalation of Late Responders

Hello! Wondering how other companies deal with escalation of SMEs who don't respond on time. We still manage fairly manually in comments when a SME is late. The notifications they get seem to just get ignored and I don't see any reporting that we can do that tracks habits of SMEs so we can report out to leadership. What do others do to escalate?

Comments

Ellen Jones

We created a custom field to document the Content Owner's manager. Our SOPs dictate that we escalate Content Owner issues (non-responsive behavior or if the CO leaves the firm and is no longer in your corporate directory) to their manager - so at least we know who their manager is/was?! Of course, all of follow-up/escalation goes out outside the system via email.

Wouldn't it be nice if there was a set of users that were not active system users but could be looped into system communications - like if you could tell Responsive to email the Content Owner and their manager (or any designee) if a tast is past due?

Stuart Smith

Hey Rachel,

Is your team using On Demand Reviews in Responsive? This would allow you to request updates from SMEs through Responsive and easily identify those that are past due--and then you can escalate to their managers, if needed. The system would also send them reminders about overdue reviews?

Sara Kirby

We struggle with the same issue. After a while the Content Owners and Moderators tune out and just delete the automated email reminders that their reviews are past due. I currently leverage a MS Teams channel to send out reminders to update their content, reminding that others are relying on them to keep the content current. It would be great to be able to quickly pull a report from Responsive, identifying those that have not completed their review so that I could easily share this with our sr. mgmt and have them lean in on pushing them to complete their reviews. This is particularly challenging since we have multiple owners assigned to the same Q&A Pair, one person will have completed their review but there is someone else that is holding it up. I would like to be able to quickly identify those that have not completed their review.

Aimee Douglass

Yes, I have been asking for such a report to be created. We would eventually like to create KPIs for the SMEs that would be tied to their quarterly reviews, and I have requested a report that would show who answered what on time during a specific project be created, as it is too unwieldy to do manually. As it is now, we escalate to managers and if that still results in no response, we escalate to our senior VPs.

Susanne Taylor

When I was a proposal manager I created a Response Team Process which included all proposal response players/departments. I included representatives from each other in the development of the process to ensure they had buy-in and to get a more unified sign off. The process explained the proposal process (also documented), how sections were assigned, how deadlines were established, the importance of proposals, and what would happen when deadlines were missed. The process was part of new-hire training for anyone who would be providing content for proposals. I also did an annual training focusing on any changes or updates. This gave the response team permission to escalate any issues. It also gave us a way to celebrate those who followed the process. I found that bragging about great response team members encourages others to be better.

Susanne Taylor

@Rachel Groess - I have moved your post (and the comments) to the Managing and Coordinating Projects topic so more people can weigh in. Just giving you a head's up so you didn't think it was removed from the community. Thank you for starting a great conversation!!

Elizabeth Bissell

We underwent a pretty major change management effort to circumvent this. We developed a RACI for both Content Manager by SME Area, and RFP Responders by SME Area (sometimes different). We obtained buy-in from the top who are Accountable for the parties Responsible. If the Responsible parties listed in each RACI are not following the outlined SLAs agreed upon by the Accountable parties, an escalation is initiated. We review the RACI with the Accountable and Responsible parties at least every 6 months and discuss any issues we have encountered.

The initial meetings and buy-in were pretty in-depth. We made sure all were aware of what we do and why we do, we also clearly documented how much time we can and do save when content is managed properly. The ongoing meetings are also a good reminder and we present statistics on how much time we saved them based on historical data.

Nick DeMarco

We maintain a Who to Contact document with key personnel across the organization. If the SME doesn't respond, I escalate to both my manager and his/her manager, making it clear that we there is revenue at risk due to lack of responsiveness. That paper trail is super important for accountability and our sales engine is organized so that any potential bottlenecks in the sales process get resolved pretty quickly due to the leverage that our sales team has within the organization (ex: all it takes is the head of sales to call up the SME/SME manager and then miraculously, the SME usually ends up sending me the info I need shortly after). If necessary, I'll send an update request twice a day to the email thread (beginning of the day and end of the day) to show that my team is on top of it, and that any lack of responsiveness falls wholly on the SME.

Not that I'm trying to absolve my self of blame necessarily, but once the offender becomes a repeat offender with paper trails, it's a no-brainer for the SME's manager to have a stern talk with the SME regarding his/her behavior. Especially if you end up losing an opportunity as a result, we have a postmortem process to capture post-engagement feedback for that exact purpose.

Hope that helps and good luck!

Amy Coleman

Hi Rachel,

We had huge issues with this about 18-24 months post-implementation. Responsive was good at identifying overdue content but not how far overdue that content was. We have asked for a 'days since expiry' field as this would allow us to see content that is becoming grossly expired easily. Currently, we run an Answer library report and manually calculate this using a formula. We then have some automated workflows through Smartsheet to send escalations to the Content Owner and their manager. It seems to work, but it would be so much better to manage this entire process within Responsive.

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