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In most businesses and organisations, email is the go-to method of communication because it is usually used by all of your staff, but what happens when someone doesn’t have access to their emails when you need to contact them?

Email can be the logical choice for much of your business communications. It is fast, accessible and most people have access to it at some point during their working day and those who don’t probably get told by colleagues or by looking at company bulletin boards.

In the case of an emergency, however it is crucial that your employees are informed quickly and efficiently and whilst your message can be delivered quickly to inboxes, with read-receipts provided if required, you are not guaranteed to reach all of your team. This is where having a multi-channel system can revolutionise the way you communicate.

Ensuring that you have more than one way to reach your team means that you can almost guarantee that your message will reach them. These can be delivered in a multitude of ways, we’ll look at just a few of the most common ones here.

Text/SMS

Sending a text or SMS message can be an effective way of getting your messages out, and as most people own a mobile phone capable of receiving text messages can ensure that you have attempted to reach your desired audience. They can however be expensive in the long term and are not always delivered if the phone is out of range. Another potential downfall here is that the message is delivered, but is unread as it may not be possible to have read receipts on text messages.

Voice Call

Similar to text messages above, most people have access to a device capable of receiving a voice call which can make it a good option to reach many people quickly, but as above if the device is out of range the call cannot go through and the call may also go unanswered. Voice calls often also carry an extra charge which can make them expensive.

Browser Notification

Using a browser notification to alert your team of a problem is another popular way of sending notifications, especially within an office setting, as most people will be working on a PC with an internet connection. The downside to this method is that not all of your staff might work at a workstation with internet access, or be away from their desk when the alert comes through meaning it could potentially be missed.

Push Notification

Sending a push notification is another method of sending alerts to your team, and will often notify them on a variety of smart devices including their smartphones and smartwatches. This has the potential to reach the vast majority of your team and will show in their notifications, but it can miss anyone who doesn’t own a smart device or who is not connected to the internet.

As you can see, there are many different ways of communicating that don’t rely solely on email, meaning that you can get your messages out to your team quickly to keep them safe, informed and productive.

Enterprise Messengers

Software such as Microsoft Teams is now widely used by many businesses and is another effective way of ensuring that your message reaches as many of your users as possible. There are many ways to do this but, by using existing groups you can send messages en masse to all of your team and it will show on whichever devices they are running Teams on. It is still possible however that messages could be missed by your team.

If you’re still relying only on email to get important messages to your staff, why not schedule a demo with Klaxon today to see how our multi-channel solution could benefit you?