We are updating our escalation features with more well-rounded workflows for you and your technicians as well as some powerful new notification options. There are four key updates in this release:
More mobile-friendly notification pages
A decline option for notifications
Cancelation warnings
Round robin options for schedules
Mobile Friendly Notification Pages
In this update, you’ll get a new and improved experience when you open your escalation notifications. When you first click on a notification, you’ll see all the customer details front and center. To see who else may be able to run the job, you can click on the “Notifications” tab in the top right. You’ll not only be able to see who is being notified in real time, you’ll also see who’s up next and when the next step will start.
Along the bottom of either tab, you’ll see a bar where the accept, decline, and stop escalation options are always visible. After someone has actioned the notification, that bar will update to show you who accepted or stopped the escalation and who the job was assigned to (if you have job creation set up for escalations).
Decline Option
The decline option will allow you to let everyone know you aren’t available to run the job without stopping notifications for everyone. Clicking decline will mark you as declined in the notification steps and stop your personal notifications. Note: if another escalation comes in or you are in a second step on the same plan, you can still be notified again.
Decline will also skip any wait time between you and the next person in the plan, so the escalation won’t wait on you to notify the next person in line.
Cancelation Warnings
Our Live Services agents will now have the ability to cancel any escalation at customer request, even if it has been accepted or stopped in your dashboard. If the customer calls to cancel before anyone in your plan has actioned the escalation, the notification page will update to show that it was canceled by a Live Services Agent. If someone has already accepted or stopped the escalation, the notification page will update, but the person who stopped/accepted the escalation will also get a notification informing them it has been canceled.
Please note: we are only able to notify the person who accepted/stopped the escalation. If they are not the person assigned to the job, they will need to notify the technician that the customer canceled.
Round Robin Options
If you have multiple technicians on call during a single shift, you may find our new round robin notifications are exactly what you’ve been needing. In the plans page, you’ll see a “Schedule Settings” button if you have a schedule attached to at least one step. When you click on “Schedule Settings” you will see 4 options:
All Contacts At the Same Time
“All contacts at the same time” is our current default. If this is selected all contacts within the shift will be notified simultaneously as soon as the step begins.
Best suited for:
Clients who have very few escalations each month
Smaller clients that may only have 1 or 2 techs in each shift
Clients that want customers served as quickly as possible
Clients whose staff tend to miss escalations
By Last Notification
“By last notification” will look through each contact in the shift and determine when their last escalation notification was (no matter which plan that notification was sent from). The person with the oldest notification date/time stamp will get the first notification for the new escalation.
Best suited for:
Clients that only get a few escalations a week
Clients that have the same techs working across multiple plans/schedules
Clients that want as much down time for their on-call techs as possible
By Last Accepted Notification
“By last accepted notification” will look through each contact in the shift and determine when they last accepted an escalation (no matter which plan that escalation was sent from). The person with the oldest acceptance date/time stamp will get the first notification for the new escalation.
Best suited for:
Clients who commonly get multiple escalations a day
Clients who want to spread jobs out evenly but don’t mind notifications
Clients that have the same techs working across multiple plans/schedules
Clients who rarely stop/ignore/decline escalations
In Shift Order
“In shift order” will check the schedule and determine the order each technician is placed in within the current shift. It will notify them from first to last. Shift order will be automatically determined by the oldest contact or can be manually set by clicking and dragging technicians within the shift view to reorder them.
Best suited for:
Clients who have a strict on-call schedule and update the schedule frequently
Clients who have a “primary contact” and “back up” tech
Advanced Options
For all options except the default (“all contacts at the same time”), you’ll see an edit icon when you select that option. Our Advanced options can be used to create unique notification patterns to fit almost any notification requirement, but can get complex. If you feel that the above options aren’t quite what you need, take a look at the advanced options. You may also want to reach out to our Support team to help you find the setup that works best for you.