Abstract: Systems, methods, and computer-readable storage media for predicting escalation risks in customer support contexts. A system implementing the example method can identify instances of customer escalation from a corpus of customer support sales, customer support, and product software development data, and determine, for the instances of customer escalation, sets of trigger conditions that were at least partially responsible for respective instances of customer escalation. Then the system can classify each of the instances of customer escalation by problem type based on the set of trigger conditions to yield classifications, and add the classifications, the sets of trigger conditions, and the instances of customer escalation to a database. Then the system can compare the database to support data to identify customers or support tasks that are likely to be escalated, and the system or a user can allocate additional support resources to proactively prevent escalations.