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When an incident strikes your business getting the message out and getting it out fast is important. However, the question you could be faced with is what is the most effective way of getting the message out?

You may think that notifying your employees by email is a simple way of getting the message out during a crisis as all your employees have access to email, and can get to it whether they are in the office or not. What would happen if it was your email system that was down, or you had an employee who was renowned for not checking their emails?

The answer to this conundrum is easily to have a system that employs multi-channel notifications at its heart.

What are multi-channel notifications?

Put simply, they can be described as notifications sent a variety of ways. Some common channels are SMS, app push notification, phone call, Teams and email. By offering a variety of different notification options you can almost guarantee that you will be able to reach your team in a way which is meaningful to them.

How does this help avoid alert fatigue?

Alert fatigue happens when your employees receive too many notifications, and can happen even more quickly if they regularly receive irrelevant notifications. Using multi-channel notifications allows you to give your employees a choice of how they receive their notifications. This empowerment of your employees helps them to feel more in control of their notifications so they are more likely to react when notifications are received.

What happens when the first choice channel fails?

As mentioned above, what happens if your primary notification channel is down and the message fails to send? This is where multiple channels start to play a more important role. Ideally, you will have a system that will check to see whether a notification has been received or responded to regularly and if the message has not been received, to try the next channel available, whether that is the next most favourable channel chosen by an employee or one that an admin has chosen to ensure the message is received.

So how many channels are enough?

We don’t think there is necessarily a right answer to this question, but rather as many as required to ensure your message is received would be our suggestion for how many channels are enough.

How many channels do you use for your notification system? If you don’t think you’ve got enough to cover your needs, why not schedule a demo to see how our multi-channel solution can ensure your message is received by all your employees.