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I was watching Aziz Ansari's comedy special, Dangerously Delicious last night and one of his bits was about communication and dating. He had this gem that he threw out to start it off:
It made me think about all the different ways that we can be reached, and what the choice of communication channel says about the importance of the message itself. Most of us now own a smartphone which means that there are more ways than ever to connect with someone: a phone call, email, text message (SMS), multimedia message (MMS), iMessage (Apple), BBM (RIM), instant message apps, social media apps (Facebook, Twitter, Google+), enterprise 2.0 apps (Yammer, Chatter), or any other application that can send you push notifications. And let's add in home and office phones for good measure, some of which support multiple communication channels themselves.
If you're in IT, how would you want to be contacted for different types of issues that required your attention? For companies that use an xMatters relevance engine as part of their IT Management process, here's a sample of what I typically recommend:
- Automated phone calls when assembling teams of fix agents to resolve major incidents. Your phone rings, you get a brief update, if your'e available to help you hit a button and you're connected into a conference call with the rest of the team.
- Text messages for SEV2 type issues, or when something has been waiting for your response for a while, like a ticket in your assignment queue, or a change requst that needs your approval.
- Emails for regular communications like status updates, lower severity issues, or non-critical change requests.
The right choice of how you deliver the message tells you something about the situation instantly. If my phone rings and I see that it's xMatters calling, I know it must be something serious. If my phone vibrates and I see that it's a text from xMatters, I know that it's something I need to address pretty quickly. If I scan down my email and see a number of messages from xMatters, I know that there is activity around my area of responsiblity or interest that I should review.
The wrong choices can have painful consequences. Too many automated phone calls will at the least annoy people, and worse can create a culture where people just ignore the calls and send them to voicemail, wasting the urgency effect. Using email along means that you will lose any sense of differentiation to your communications. We've all had the experience of seeing a bunch of emails in our inbox and thinking "Ugh, I'll deal with these as a batch later" without opening a single one. If there was anything that needed your immediate action, that opportunity has been lost.
If you have a communication channel best practice you'd like to share, jump into the fray in the comments!
Oh, and if you want to catch Ansari's rant on texting, you can catch the short preview, or buy one hour special. Totally worth $5.
Abbas Haider Ali.
