I think this JIRA ID might tie up really nicely with the above:
 [Tasks] Reminder system
http://www.wgmdev.com/jira/browse/CHD-846

I'm not sure whether to recommend a consolidation or keep them separate.

Linked (related to):
CHD-846 and CHD-1123 , the two "reminder" systems.

http://www.cerb4.com/forums/showpost.php?p=13455&postcount=1

Escalating

Implemented in 5.5-dev:

* [Virtual Attendants/Scheduled Behavior] [CHD-846] [CHD-1123] Virtual Attendants can now schedule behavior to happen at a future date. This provides an incredibly flexible way to build reminders and automated followups. For example, if an incoming message is from an organization with a service level agreement (SLA), your Virtual Attendant could schedule behavior in 2 hours to check the status of the ticket and react appropriately (e.g. escalate). Scheduled behavior can also reschedule itself, providing the ability to create loops of behavior that repeat until certain conditions are met. For example, if the duration since the last worker reply is too long according to the SLA, a reminder could be sent to the record's watchers every hour until rectified. Each new reply from a customer could initiate the behavior loop over again. Scheduled behavior is managed by a queue that runs as part of a scheduled job from /cron, which is more efficient than holding up the email parser or worker UI during long-running tasks.