SimplrFlex currently doesn't pay for escalated tickets regardless of how much effort was put into the ticket. Similarly, we do not charge the business partner for those tickets that end up requiring escalation. Business Partner's only pay for resolved tickets and, as you can imagine, would be unhappy paying for tickets where they still ended up having to do work.
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Aside from the economic challenges, we continue to consider ways to compensate Experts for escalated tickets. One concern that we have is that this might incentivize bad behavior. Right now, it's not in an Expert's interest to respond to a ticket that should be escalated because they won't receive payment. As soon as we start paying for tickets where an Expert sent messages and later escalated, Experts will start sending messages on tickets that should have been escalated just to receive the payout. That then creates a poor experience for the customer since they probably weren't being properly helped, and it puts the platform at risk with the business partner...especially if they are being charged for this.
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Obviously, not every Expert would do this, but a few bad apples can ruin the whole barrel.
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In the meantime, we're trying to reduce the number of tickets that need to be escalated in the first place. This is through things such as the ability to cancel and change orders, apply coupon codes, and more. Since Business Partners do not pay SimplrFlex for escalated tickets, we share a common goal with Experts to reduce escalations as much as possible.

One other thing that might put your mind at ease a bit is to consider the number of interactions where and Expert only has to send a macro with minimal effort and the customer never responds. On those, Experts get paid just as much as they would on a more involved ticket, and those make up ~70-80% of the email tickets we receive on the platform. This definitely helps even out the more complicated tickets or ones where Experts end up having to escalate.
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Regardless, we will continue to work towards a mutually beneficial resolution here.