Abstract: A remote services management (RSM) fault escalation mechanism is disclosed which provides the ability to send electronic mail to one or more preselected recipients (the selection based upon criteria such as the type of fault, type of machine and customer) on the occurrence of an escalatable fault on a customer computer. The fault and the e-mail routing data is stored in a relational database. If a recipient of the e-mail does not respond by entering an “incident number” in the database via a Web interface within a predetermined time interval, a daemon process which scans the database at preselected intervals sends a second piece of e-mail to one or more other recipients (with a copy to the primary e-mail recipient). If none of the recipients responds within another time interval, the daemon process inserts into another table an entry containing a paging phone number and predetermined (based on the selection criteria above) numeric value, and also logs the lack of response.