Did I Really Just Send That? Best Practices for Reviewing and Approving Alerts

Accurate communication is essential to keeping your company running smoothly.

When you send a message to associates, you need to communicate clearly and in a professional manner. Typos, grammatical mistakes, use of the wrong names, incorrect dates and times – these messaging errors can give your business, and personal, brand a bad name.

When the communication includes emergency notices and instructions, it’s even more critical that it be accurate and clear. One wrong word or missing detail could lead to negative outcomes, including loss of life or assets. Below, we put together recommendations for implementing an internal message review process for your broadcast messages that will help keep everyone informed and updated accurately.

Importance of Message Review

The ability to quickly communicate with employees is a critical component of any business continuity plan. Those organizations that have already implemented a mass notification system are a step ahead of the proverbial storm. Now it’s time to take the next stride by improving the accuracy of alerts.

For most organizations, accurately disseminating time-sensitive information is a daunting task. Critical situations call for rapid response.  Yet if you move too quickly, you increase the potential for error and the possibility of releasing incorrect information.

Imagine receiving an alert from your organization, “Leave the building now. Fire located on second floor, go elevators”. For some, their immediate action would be to follow directions and rush to the elevators. Only to learn after the incident that a typo with the word “go” instead of “no” had left a crowd of panicked employees inside the building trying to escape through the elevator.

How can you ensure alert accuracy?

Before you send out any alert, establish a review process. Identify the individual(s) who will be responsible for reviewing the alerts and designate them as “Approvers”. Having more than one person review an alert before it is sent increases the chances the information is correct and reliable.

Once you have your Approver(s) selected, implement the following best practices:

• Perform a fact-checking process. Have someone ready to double-check any vital facts within a message, such as standard operating protocols, a timeline of events, or recipient lists.
• Proofread the actual text of a message. In addition to looking unprofessional, having spelling mistakes and grammar errors in your alerts can cause confusion among recipients.
• Choose more than one method of communication when notifying individuals for approving message alerts. For example, utilize email, text message, and your organization’s instant messenger. This will ensure the person receives the notification and reviews the alert in a timely fashion.
• Require reviewers to timestamp and log their reviews and edits. This will provide your organization with a timeframe and record for auditing the emergency response at a later date. The information can help you identify gaps or inconsistencies in the review and approval process so your team can improve the response rate in the future.
• Implement a mass notification system like Send Word Now, which contains a feature for alert approvals that will notify the appropriate individuals when a message requires their approval.

These necessary steps will help you transmit accurate and professional alerts even in an emergency response scenario. The best way to accomplish each of these best practices is by choosing to broadcast alerts within your organization with Send Word Now.

Send Word Now Alert Approvals

In the latest line of innovations released by Send Word Now from OnSolve, is a feature that allows your company to set up Alert Approvals.

With Send Word Now’s Alert Approvals feature, organizations are able to automatically notify required personnel when an alert requires review. The alert is placed in a “pending state” until a designated Approver reviews, edits, rejects or approves it to be sent. Once approved, the alert will be scheduled and each step of the process is documented for a full audit trail. Every message counts, and your organization needs to be able to rely on a system that is designed to communicate your messages securely and quickly, but above all, accurately each and every time.

To learn more about how Send Word Now Alert Approvals can benefit your community messaging alert process, contact your representative today. We are excited to share demo of our Send Word Now solution with you.