Retention of existing clients is crucial, and post-sales processes play a vital role in achieving this goal. Checks and balances are essential in making sure process and growth are aligned. From my perspective, if a company extends a timeframe after submitting a case, I don’t mind as long as there is constant communication – a lack of transparency is a massive red flag.
Here is where escalation rules come into play – by standardizing case timeframes, executives and managers can focus on their day-to-day responsibilities. When people think of cases, customer service, technical support, warranties, and billing come to mind. With Salesforce, anything could be a case. You can use it for any external or internal business requirement by leveraging record types and customizing the object.
What Are Escalation Rules?
Escalation rules allow Salesforce orgs to automatically escalate cases when the established criteria are met. Escalation rules are split into two components: Rule Entries and Escalation action. Let’s take a closer look at each of these and how they look inside Salesforce.
Rule Entries
Let’s review what all of these sections are and what they can do.
- Rule Entry Order: This becomes relevant when you have multiple rule entries – this way you can determine which one runs first if there is a case that could potentially meet the criteria of two rules. You can also edit this from the main rule screen shown below.
Keep in mind that only one can be Escalation Rule active at a time!
- Rule Entry Criteria Values: Here is where we establish the rule action trigger criteria. We can use case and related object fields.
- Rule Entry Criteria Values: Let’s review the two choices:
- Criteria are met: We can use case and related object fields
- Formula evaluates to true: We can enter a custom formula to meet our needs.
- Business Hours: We have three choices – you can even create a unique business hours record for a particular escalation rule!
- Ignore business hours
- Use business hours specified on the case
- Set business hours
- Escalation Times: Here we determine when the escalation clock starts ticking. We can use one of the following:
- When case is created
- When case is created, and disable after case is first modified
- Based on last modification time
Escalation Actions
Escalation actions specify in what amount of time cases escalate and what actions take place. You can add up to five actions for each rule entry to escalate the case over increasing periods of time. Let’s take a closer look at each of these and how they look inside Salesforce.
- Age Over: Add the number of hours and select 0 or 30 minutes from the dropdown. This works in tandem with the Escalation Time value we picked.
- Auto-reassign cases: You can assign or reassign the case to a user and/or a queue (learn what they are here) and send an email notification.
- Notify Users: There are three ways we can notify an individual or a group.
- You can notify an individual user.
- You can notify the case owner by checking the box below.
- You can add five email addresses you would like to notify here. You can use a distribution list to notify a large group of people.
If you are planning on sending notification emails when a case escalates, consider creating new or editing the existing email templates.
Case Studies
Case escalation rules are extremely versatile, as they can be customized for just about any organization’s business needs. If you find a business requirement you can’t fulfill, you can always leverage Salesforce’s automation capabilities.
Here are two examples of case escalation rules.
1. Escalating High-Priority Cases for a Healthcare Provider
The healthcare industry is an extremely time-sensitive industry, and ensuring a prompt resolution to a case is of the utmost importance.
A healthcare provider wants to ensure that high-priority cases are attended to promptly, especially if there is a potential liability.
Rule Criteria
- Priority = “High”
- Potential Liability = “Yes”
Rule Actions
If the case has not been resolved in 24 hours:
- Assign the case to a specific team member
- Send an email notification to the team leader
2. Escalating Stalled Support Cases for a Salesforce Consulting Company
The Salesforce consulting world is extremely competitive – particularly after a company has completed its implementation. There are a plethora of ways a company can get support at this stage, including hiring full-time employees, hiring independent contractors, hiring a consulting company, etc.
A Salesforce consulting company wants to ensure that cases are not left unattended for extended periods of time.
Rule Criteria
- Type = “Managed Services”
Rule Actions
If the case has been open for more than 72 hours without any updates:
- Assign the case to an IT Support Tier 2 queue
- Send an email notification to the team leader and the case owner
Resolving the Case Studies
Let’s work through these together, follow along in my video walkthrough!
You can also see how the end result looks in the screenshots below:
Escalating High-Priority Cases for a Healthcare Provider
Escalating Stalled Support Cases for a Salesforce Consulting Company
Limits and Execution Order
Growing organizations using escalation rules will probably also use workflow rules, assignment rules, and auto-response rules. When designing the organization and translating all of the business needs, we have to keep in mind that there are limitations to these both individually and as a group. Here are some that directly impact escalation rules design:
- Entries per rule: 3,000
- Filter criteria per rule entry: 25
- Actions allowed per rule: 200
Some limits also apply to both active and inactive workflow, assignment, auto-response, and escalation rules. Make sure you tidy up the org if you are replacing or improving a business requirement!
- Total rules per object: 500
- Total rules across objects: 2,000
These are just some of the many limitations – always review official Salesforce documentation before planning for these four features. You can see all of them here: Limits for Assignment, Auto-Response, and Escalation Rules.
When Do Rules Execute?
Another important consideration is the order of execution of rules. If you are using some or all of these, make sure your business process aligns and that you are maximizing them for their individual purpose.
Here is the order in which they execute:
- Validation rules
- Assignment rules
- Auto-response rules
- Workflow rules (with immediate actions)
- Escalation rules
Final Thoughts
I am personally a massive fan of Slack and love integrating every service an organization uses. How could we integrate Slack and escalation rules? You can create an email address for a channel or DM. Add the email address the Slack channel generates so that every member can be notified!
With most companies that are part of the Salesforce ecosystem and using Slack as a way to consolidate their internal communication, this is a no-brainer. If you want to learn more about Slack, the Slack Skills page is a great starting point!
Related Articles
- Best Practices for the Salesforce Case Object
- An Admin’s Guide to Salesforce Omni-Channel
- Email-to-case Best Practices: Case Assignment Rules, Queues & Auto-Replies
- Everything You Need to Know About Salesforce Queues