A busy Salesforce organisation often has thousands of Salesforce Cases which need attention, sometimes on a daily basis. With so much going on, employees may not have time to get to everything and important cases within Salesforce may be de-prioritised – or even worse, forgotten altogether. One clever automated solution to this problem is setting escalation rules in Salesforce, which automatically route cases to agreed personnel if they haven’t been resolved over a set period of time. There are some fantastic benefits of escalation rules and conveniently setting escalation rules in Salesforce is a very straightforward process.
Before we begin, it’s worth pointing out that escalation rules are just one type of automated rule used in the Salesforce ecosystem. There are plenty of others and it’s important to establish that rules have been designed to work in conjunction with each other. In Salesforce there is a clear hierarchy for which types of rules take precedence, so even if you set any escalation triggers in Salesforce they may not always work, depending on what other rules are in play.
Salesforce Rules In Priority Order:
- Validation Rules
- Assignment Rules
- Auto-Response Rules
- Workflow Rules (With Immediate Actions)
- And Finally Escalation Rules
If none of the above rules conflict with the escalation triggers you have setup in Salesforce, then we are in a great place to automate the escalation of cases to chosen personnel. When rules are first configured, the Salesforce users defines how much time needs to elapse before unresolved cases are escalated and additionally where those cases need to be referred to. Below we outlined the three main benefits of escalation rules:
Escalation Rules Can Be Mapped To Your Service Level Agreements
In the World of customer service, it’s important to stay true to your word. Often clients or customers are on service packages where they have agreed support, within a certain timeframe. If a client expects to receive a response from their helpdesk tickets within 24 hours, then escalation rules are perfect for ensuring the responsibility of replying to IT tickets is shared across the team. If a case hasn’t been resolved for a considerable amount of time, then setting escalation rules in Salesforce can act as a safety net for ensuring someone goes back to the case in question.
Protect Against Busier Support Times
Organisations do not run on an even plateau. There are usually times where teams are relatively comfortable with their workload but there are also occasions when a spike in activity can cause significant pressure. If the volume of new cases coming into an organisation is more than can be appropriately handled, then two things may happen:
- The quality of case responses may decrease, as employees have to do more with less time available
- Alternatively, new cases may be left unattended for longer, due to a backlog building up
In both of these situations, some form of Salesforce escalation management is needed. Escalation rules can be setup to only come into play during these busy moments, enabling cases to be redirected to support teams who may only come online during busy moments of the day.
Prioritisation Of Key Contacts & Customers
A final benefit of setting escalation rules in Salesforce, is that they can be incredibly useful for giving your most valued contacts a preferential service. Most customers may be happy with an agreed level of service however your gold customers or the businesses in the top 5% of generated revenue, may need to be kept exceptionally happy. A Salesforce escalation management hierarchy can be established, whereby any escalation triggers fire based purely on who the customer is. This enables organisations to ensure their most valued customers are truly receiving the red carpet service they deserve.
We hope you found this article useful and are inspired to try setting up escalation rules in Salesforce – if you haven’t already done so! We would also urge you to check our Q-Assign app, which can be used to automatically route cases and leads in a variety of useful ways. It also works seamlessly with any escalation rules you already have in place. Explore Q-Assign here.
