How fast do your employees respond to corporate notification system messages? If your organization is like most companies, their rate of response is most likely disappointing, especially if you have been using the same notification system for some time now.
To Reply or not to Reply
Although not all messages you send require a reply, it would still be preferable to get your people to send an answer, even if it’s just to acknowledge that they have received the message. Fortunately, some corporate notification systems have a built-in feature that requires all recipients to acknowledge the message before they can close it.
Still, a special feature like this does not diminish the need for your target audience to respond to your message and take appropriate action, which is why you need to build a culture of responsiveness. One of the best practices you can follow to ensure this is to make your employees respond to all your corporate notification system alerts at all times. When they know that a response is required of them, the more they will be driven to read and understand the message properly. Moreover, if they are trained to respond even to the least urgent alerts, they will know the importance of replying to critical and urgent messages.
Increasing Response Rates
How do you increase the response rates for your corporate notification system messages? Here are some tips you can follow:
1. Be consistent. By using the same process of writing for all your messages, you not only make the job of composing the message easy; you also set your recipients’ expectations and reinforce how they are supposed to read the message so they can understand and respond to it appropriately. To do this, use the same message format, if possible.
2. Indicate your purpose. By using a consistent introduction or subject line for all your messages, you will be able to get the best response. As such, the purpose of your message must be written plainly and clearly, stating the issue and the kind of action required. Instead of writing “There will be a critical outage this afternoon, and I wish to have everyone’s acknowledgement of this message. For your compliance” you must write, “Critical outage at 16:30. Response required.”
3. Specify the sender. By indicating who the sender is, you add consistency and clarity to your messages. Similarly, this allows recipients to recognize the types of corporate alerts each sender release and how they are supposed to respond. To gain attention, the sender must be identified through position, not just the name. “A message from the CEO” will always have higher response rates than “a message from John Davis,” because not everyone in the company may recognize the name, especially if it’s a very common name.
4. Use a standard structure for all your messages. A predictable structure allows recipients to quickly identify what the message is about and whether or not it is urgent. All messages must also have standard content in the message title like “Policy Updates” or “Critical Outage.”
5. Be consistent yet flexible. The previous tips have been pushing the importance of consistency across all messages. However, consistency does not mean rigidity. The standardization of messages must help you accomplish your aims, not prevent you from doing so. As such, your corporate notification system must also be flexible enough for customization, if the need be. For your communication strategy to be successful, you must strike the balance between consistency and flexibility so you can tailor-fit your messages while still being consistent in your approach.
Make proper use of your mass notification system to drive response rates up. By taking note of the above mentioned tips and implementing them in your communication, you will surely reach your aims.
