If you’re using Freshworks to handle customer feedback, you already know it’s not just about logging complaints and moving on. It’s about catching issues before customers bail, making sure the right people see the right feedback, and actually acting on what matters. This guide is for folks who want practical, real-world steps for managing and escalating customer feedback in Freshworks—without wasting time on pointless meetings or endless ticket loops.
Let’s get into what works, what doesn’t, and how you can set this up so you don’t lose sleep (or customers).
1. Get Your Freshworks Account Set Up for Feedback (Don’t Skip This)
First things first: If your Freshworks account is a mess, handling feedback will be a mess, too. Before you do anything else, make sure you’ve sorted out:
- Channels: Are you collecting feedback from email, chat, phone, social, or just one? Make sure all your channels are hooked up in Freshworks so nothing falls through the cracks.
- Ticket Properties: Customize your ticket fields (like “Feedback Type” or “Urgency”) so you can actually sort and filter feedback.
- Team Roles: Who’s responsible for what? Make sure there’s clarity on who handles feedback, who reviews escalations, and who just needs to be CC’d.
Pro tip: Don’t overcomplicate things with 50 custom fields. Start simple—add more only when you’re actually missing something.
2. Create a Clear Process for Capturing Customer Feedback
Feedback shouldn’t just show up as a vague ticket with “unhappy customer” in the subject. You need a process that:
- Encourages specifics: Make it easy for customers (and your team) to provide details. Use custom ticket templates or required fields for feedback type (“bug,” “feature request,” “complaint,” etc.).
- Tags wisely: Tags in Freshworks are handy, but don’t go wild. Pick a few meaningful ones—like
churn-risk,feature-request,billing-issue—and use them consistently. - Avoids duplicate tickets: Set up automations to flag or merge duplicate feedback, especially for big issues.
What to ignore: Don’t worry about capturing every customer comment as a separate ticket. Focus on actionable feedback—stuff you can do something about.
3. Set Up Automations to Prioritize and Route Feedback
Here’s where Freshworks gets useful—if you set it up right. Automations can make sure urgent or important feedback isn’t just sitting in the queue.
- Auto-assign by topic: Use rules to send billing complaints to your finance team, feature requests to product, and urgent bugs to support leads.
- Prioritize pain points: Set up automations so that certain tags (like
churn-riskorurgent) bump a ticket’s priority or send an alert. - Escalation triggers: If a ticket sits untouched for more than X hours, escalate it automatically to a manager.
What works: Automations are great for repeat issues and obvious escalations. But don’t trust them to catch nuance—a human still needs to review edge cases.
4. Build a Simple Escalation Path (and Stick to It)
This is where most teams fall down. If your escalation path is “just ping the boss if you’re stuck,” you’ll get dropped balls and annoyed customers.
Make it explicit: - Level 1: Frontline support triages and solves what they can. - Level 2: If not resolved in 24 hours or if certain keywords/tags are present, escalate to a senior agent or manager. - Level 3: For high-value customers or “about to churn” signals, escalate to leadership or a dedicated retention team.
Document this in Freshworks: Use ticket status, groups, or private notes so everyone knows who owns the ticket and what’s next.
What doesn’t work: Escalating everything “just in case.” You’ll burn out your best people and slow down the process for everyone.
5. Communicate Back—Don’t Let Feedback Die in the Void
Customers hate silence more than waiting. Make sure you always:
- Acknowledge feedback quickly: Even if you can’t fix it right away, let customers know you heard them.
- Set expectations: If something needs escalation or a longer fix, be honest about timelines.
- Close the loop: Once you’ve resolved or acted on feedback, update the customer—even if the answer is “we’re not doing this right now.”
Pro tip: Use Freshworks canned responses to speed this up, but personalize them. People can spot copy-paste a mile away.
6. Track Trends (But Don’t Drown in Data)
It’s easy to get lost in dashboards, but you’ll get more value by focusing on patterns:
- Run regular reports: Look at tags, ticket volume, and escalation frequency. Which issues keep coming up? Which customers are always unhappy?
- Review “churn-risk” tickets: These are the canaries in the coal mine. If you see a spike, act fast.
- Share findings with the right teams: Product, sales, and leadership should see the top 3-5 pain points regularly—not a 30-page slide deck.
What to ignore: Vanity metrics like “average response time” mean nothing if you’re not resolving the right issues.
7. Build Feedback into Retention Workflows
If you want to actually keep more customers, feedback can’t live in a silo.
- Tag and flag churn risks: Any ticket that hints at canceling, frustration, or poor product fit should be flagged for your retention or customer success team.
- Follow up on critical feedback: Don’t just close the ticket—schedule a follow-up, call, or email to check in a week later.
- Document learnings: Keep a simple log (even a Google Sheet will do) of what worked to save at-risk customers. Review and tweak your process every month.
What works: Making retention everyone’s job, not just support or success. The more eyes on churn risks, the better.
8. What to Avoid: Common Pitfalls
- Over-automating: No, AI won’t magically fix customer relationships. Use automations to reduce grunt work, not replace empathy or judgment.
- Analysis paralysis: Don’t delay action waiting for “perfect” data or the ideal feedback workflow. Start simple and update as you go.
- Letting tickets linger: Unanswered or unresolved feedback is a retention killer. Escalate or close the loop, even if you don’t have a perfect answer.
Keep It Simple, Iterate, and Stay Human
Managing and escalating customer feedback in Freshworks isn’t rocket science—but it does take discipline and a bit of setup. Start with the basics: clear processes, smart automations, and a real escalation path. Don’t get bogged down in dashboards or overthinking every complaint. The best teams keep things simple, act fast, and always remember there’s a real person behind every ticket.
If you’re not sure where to start, pick one step from above and get it working this week. You’ll see better retention—not because you’ve got fancier tools, but because you’re actually listening and responding in ways customers notice. That’s what keeps them coming back.