Recently I helped a customer automatically escalate Zendesk tickets that are not being answered in a timely fashion. The customer doesn't seem to have an issue getting their Zendesk Agents to respond quickly on a new ticket; the issue was when a customer was engaged and the ticket was in Open (having been just changed from Pending).
We identified what Group the ticket would be in and set a timer (Automation) to fire after a certain amount of time. Luckily, Zendesk allows us to escalate a ticket to a person or a group. We were able to send a notification to just the interested manager rather than flood an entire group with emails!
We cloned an existing automation (what a nifty trick!)
Meet all of the following conditions:
- Ticket Status is Greater than New
- Ticket Status is Open
- Ticket Group is XXX
- Hours since Assignee Update (Business) Greater than 4
- Ticket tags do not contain "escalation_1"
Perform these Actions:
Notification: Email User: (Interested Manager)
Notification: Email User: (Assigned Agent)
Add tags: "escalation_1"
By adding the tag, we nullified the Automation from running again in ~1 hour. In other instances, I have added 2nd and 3rd escalations as needed. The trick is to remember to ALSO create a trigger to remove the "escalation_1" (and 2 and 3) tag(s) when the Assignee does indeed make his or her public update.
If you have any issues putting this in, feel free to contact me and I can walk you through it!