Alerts enable teams to respond as and when incidents occur, rather than dissecting it later. By notifying responders of issues in a timely manner, alerts allow issues to be addressed before major business impacts occur. Well-designed alerts are thus a critical component of resilience and swift response capabilities.
A good alert is a notification that is designed to clearly communicate an issue or problem, while also providing clear direction on what actions need to be taken. Actionable alerts are important for effective incident response and remediation.
What makes an alert actionable?
Alert users on their chosen platform
The alert should reach the recipient on the right platform. Team members often have individual preferences for receiving notifications across platforms like email, Slack, WhatsApp, Microsoft Teams, or Google Chat. Delivering the alert directly into their main workflow retains effectiveness by enabling immediate visibility and rapid response.
Contextual
The alert should give context to the person receiving it. They should be able to act on it without having to open another report or dashboard. For example, a good alert for a tele-consultation company could be, ‘Dr. Rishabh has not joined the 3 pm appointment’. This gives the recipient enough context to follow up with Dr. Rishabh or have another doctor fill in if possible.
Give ample buffer time
The alert should give the recipient time to act on the alert. For example, in case a truck is supposed to leave the warehouse at 3:30 pm, the alert for the orders not packed should be sent to the respective person by 3:15 pm or earlier. This should give the recipient some time to act on the alert and fix the issue.
Pre-set priorities
Every team does a host of activities to make their customer experience the best. Prioritise alerts by severity and impact to enable teams to filter and focus on the most urgent alerts. Establish clear priority levels like P1 for critical outages, P2 for high severity, and P3 for lower priority.
Follow escalation protocol
Alerts should escalate as per the SOP to prevent alert fatigue. If Rahul can't resolve the issue within the set time, escalate it to his manager. If still unresolved, escalate to leadership. This ensures problems reach the right level at the right time.
Resolution
There should be a mechanism for resolving the incidents. Either it should get auto-resolved based on the data that flows into the system or the system should allow the user to manually mark the issue as solved once the appropriate action has been taken.
By following these principles, teams can swiftly respond to incidents through actionable notifications. Well-designed alerts enable organisations to minimise disruption and optimise their process.
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