You still gotta click it once a champ gets max exp to get them to the next level. 

They stop leveling until you click them, which is why it doesn't help nearly as much as you'd think with leveling champions - though it depends of course on how often throughout the day you can check them and click. Jumping several levels isn't possible, perhaps you increased the champion's level in the tavern while he was in the pit, or something. 

Thanks. I just wanted to confirm.

We have been trying to get the game to make the hero level up automatically with out having to login & push the level up button.

Sadly, The game doesn't consider it a priority or problem I guess.

We will have to wait and see what happens in the future I suppose.

You never know.

They might do it in the future.

I found the pit works the best if you level your champions up in the Tavern or in some content granting XP (such as Campaign), then put them into the pit to get the higher levels there. I can put a champion there in the evening or in the morning, go to work, then come back to a levelled up champion.

@Player J for the game design, it's not a problem, it's made like that so people would login and interact with the game (by interact means to click on clickable things)

It's a metric game developers use to see how "good" is their game at engaging players to interact with their game, the more clicks the better. So yeah, it is intentionally designed like that and for all intents and purposes, it is working as intended.