Salesforce Case Escalation Rules are designed to automatically perform an action when a case meets specific criteria and has not been resolved within a defined time period. This directly addresses the requirement to act on unassigned VIP cases after 5 hours. The rule can be configured to check the case criteria (e.g., a "VIP Customer" field) and, if the case remains open or unassigned, trigger an action like reassigning it to a specific user or queue. The 24/7 support requirement is met by configuring the rule's escalation times to ignore business hours, ensuring the 5-hour countdown operates continuously.

A. Assignment Rules: These rules run immediately upon record creation or when edited to meet criteria. They do not have a time-delay component to trigger an action after 5 hours.

B. Business Hours: This feature defines the working hours for support teams. While escalation rules can use business hours, business hours themselves do not perform any automated actions like case transfers.

C. Case Queues: Queues are holding locations for records that do not have an owner. They are a potential destination for an escalation or assignment rule but do not contain the logic to automatically escalate a case.

1. Salesforce Help Documentation, "Set Up Escalation Rules": "Case escalation rules automatically escalate cases when the case meets the criteria defined in the rule entry. You can create rule entries, which define criteria for escalating a case, and escalation actions, which define what happens when a case escalates." This document outlines the core function of escalation rules being time- and criteria-based.

2. Salesforce Help Documentation, "Escalation Actions": "Escalation actions determine when the case escalates and what happens when the case escalates... Specify the age over which a case escalates... Automatically reassign the case to another user or queue." This confirms the ability to reassign based on a time threshold.

3. Salesforce Trailhead, "Automate Case Management" Module, "Set Up Case Escalation and Entitlements" Unit: "Escalation rules automatically escalate unresolved cases to the right people so that no case is forgotten... You can specify how escalation times are determined. You can base escalation on when the case is created... or you can choose to ignore business hours." This directly supports using escalation rules for time-based reassignment and handling the 24/7 support requirement.