As a general rule, businesses always have a lot on their plate. They must deal not only with customer and client needs, such as support and customer service, as well as other public-facing needs such as marketing and sales strategies – but they also must manage their own internal operations, from staff management and internal meetings to managing any unforeseen incidents that may disrupt regular operations.
As you can imagine, with all of these scenarios comes a strong need for communication between various parties. And with so much on the go, sometimes there’s no time for a 20-minute telephone call where the conversation deviates from the initial relay of information. This is why the ability to send a quick, automated alert notification can be valuable for a business to help save time while still ensuring the necessary information gets distributed in a timely manner.
When you hear “alert notification” you may automatically associate this with an emergency management context, however, automated alerts have many uses in normal, everyday business operations in addition to the one-off emergency notifications.
Here are three instances where a business may have cause to send an alert notification to its staff or customers.
1.Office Closures
Occasionally, a business may need to close its offices or storefronts for a day or two at a time or operate on reduced hours. This could be due to a number of reasons – most common of which would likely be inclement weather.
In the event a business’s office needs to close or reduce their hours of operation, a supervisor or manager can easily send an alert notification to a staff list to inform them, and tell them to not to come into work for the day if appropriate. Employees can be required to confirm they have received the alert so managers can follow-up with those who do not confirm and can rest assure that no one will be trying to make their way into work.
A secondary notification can also be sent out to anyone subscribed to received messages from the business to inform them of the closure or reduced hours.
2.Service disruptions
In the same vein as closures, which is a type of disruption to a business’s operations, sometimes businesses might face other disruptions to their services, especially if their services are digital or technology-based.
If a business is faced with a planned or unplanned service interruption – for example, a telecommunications provider is currently unavailable for whatever reason – it is important to be able to send out an alert notification to all stakeholders who may be impacted to ensure they experience the least bit of inconvenience as possible.
With the right automation software, this alert notification can be sent out over multiple communication channels, so that if one piece of telecommunications infrastructure is out of service (e.g. Internet services) the alert may still reach contacts via another method (e.g. landline phones).
3.Meeting reminders
Multi-channel alert notifications can also be super helpful in inter-office communications where employees need to be reminded about certain events or meetings that are to take place. This is particularly useful if these meetings are of the last-minute variety.
The ability to confirm that you have received the reminder can help managers figure out who they need to follow up with either manually or through a secondary alert notification which can be created using the list of unconfirmed alert recipients downloaded from the notification’s report.
Automated alert reminders increase business efficiency
A simple alert notification sent at the right time can help businesses increase efficiency in their operations, either in an everyday operations capacity or during an emergency. Sending automated alerts reduces the chance that businesses will have to spend more time at their computer or on the phones than they have to and focus their attention elsewhere.
Being able to use alert software for more than just emergency response scenarios also help businesses increased their comfort levels when the software actually does need to be used for actual disaster recovery purposes. The more comfortable a business is with sending automated alerts before they need to send out a critical notification, the more efficient the business will ultimately be when sending out these notifications whenever they’re needed.
Is your business looking for alert notification software?
If your business would like to start taking advantage of alert notification technology to help increase efficiency, SimplyCast’s Alerts channel is right up your alley!
With Alerts, businesses can send notifications via up to four communication channels: email, SMS, voice, or fax. Recipients can confirm they have received the notification and users can download the alert report to obtain a list of all recipients who have not yet confirmed their receipt of the notification.
Click on the button below to request a demo of Alerts to see just how much more efficient it can make your organization!
