There's the notion that everything happens for a reason.
It doesn’t work like that in the world of property security.
Your team has to be on high alert - especially with the prevalence of advanced technology and smarter criminals.
Problems associated with your property's security affect your customer experience.
The need for effectively and efficiently mitigating incidents is on the rise.
For what feels like a millennium, the number of incidents has crippled operations.
An inability to synchronize and react on time can make you feel powerless!
What's the result of all this out-of-control chaos?
Countless cases involving property incidents.
This can lead to legal escalation and substantial financial loss.
So how do you manage this?
You need text messaging software.
Value-Added Event Security Starts with a Text Alert System
Proactive management and processes are the only ways to overcome these odds.
For years property managers worked harder, and managers working "smarter" only led to excessive paperwork and stress.
You don't need unnecessary stress.
Proactive managers develop in-house databases and compile intricate spreadsheets to coordinate and track incidents with unforeseen challenges.
But a spreadsheet offers no method for analyzing their success or failure.
We're sure you understood increased efficiency is essential for operational success, but more reports and paperwork require more tracking, filing, and more finding.
Talk about an exhausting process to forecast when and where incidents may occur.
Yes, depending on your industry, you might have different methods for handling incidents – but one point holds – the types of incidents and how they are handled are pretty close to being the same!
A lone incident can produce ripple effects among all areas of your operation.
This could be a financial nightmare, especially if you aren't empowering your customers to have a 'say' in their experience.
Yelling or searching for ushers only proves counterproductive.
Remember, yelling doesn't solve anything; it only makes it worse.
Understanding this problem is what led to system providers developing solutions for immediate communication by event professionals worldwide.
Your Security Team Will Carry the Day with an Upgraded System
From the moment a message is sent to the closing of an incident call, the system should provide you with various features and benefits solving communication challenges.
This can be done in a well-organized manner, leading to incident cases with positive financial and operational impact.
Having the ability to integrate all departments into one solution is where a system can drastically advance an organization.
A system that allows all departments to be segmented while also allowing them to communicate with one another, you'd think it's unheard of, but it's not!
Define permissions for your staff, giving them the right to see and manage only incoming messages associated with their department.
Let's role-play for a second.
A slip and fall incident can be seen across all departments allowing your medical supervisors to dispatch personnel.
Your medical team updates the system, informing staff from your administration department of the incident's progress.
The incident gets handled correctly; operational awesomeness increases because all the 'need to know' people communicate effectively.
You nailed it.
Do you see how all this benefits your complete operation?
When choosing your text messaging software, make sure your strategy includes these six traits.
- Prominently displayed signage. This will make or break your initiatives. The promotion of your system provides areturn on investment. How? Customers will know the system exists! More importantly – they'll learn how to use it properly. You must make the needed information available for your customers to contribute to everyone's safety. Your system will only offer purpose when your customers and staff are using it. Take note: Text messaging software is a time of need solution. It's imperative to display visible signage throughout your property for customers to see. Here's how it works. Your shortcode and keyword should be displayed on banners and signs throughout the property. All information required by operations to respond accordingly to the incident should also be included in your signage. Once a text message is sent, an effective system will automatically respond with a message notifying your customer the message was received. Your staff will then see the message within their centralized text panel (or message queue).
- Once a message is received, a valuable solution starts with color-coded messages giving your staff a visual representation of all messages by status so that nothing gets overlooked.Notifications can be prioritized and examined in real time to know which stage in the communication process they are.
- A conversation thread provides you and your staff with a visualization of a 2-way conversation in an organized format so all messages can be looked at for vital information so that you can make game-time decisions. This replaces unclear information with facts.
- Having response templates provide you with the ability to respond to a message… in a single click directly from your message queue. This tool allows your staff to request additional information when needed quickly.
- Creating user groups for event day alerts provides you with convenience for communicating specific information to staff that's not incident related. A sound system can automatically (or manually) send traffic, weather, parking, or news alerts to staff groups. This can help you mitigate incidents and save lives! For example, the alerts and notifications feature affords you the ability to notify staff of storm warnings, initiating protocol to shelter patrons before conditions worsen. (Text messaging is the last to stop working during a cellular failure.)
- Analytics and reporting provide you the most value over time, giving insight into the system's effectiveness. Now you can see how long a message took from 'new' to 'pending,' and then 'closed.' It's another way you get historical documentation to protect your assets against liability.
Over to You
When you implement text messaging software, you instantly empower your customers to have a say in their environment and provide your staff with the tools to handle incidents as they are happening quickly.
This dramatically increases customer experience. Real-time reporting allows you to improve your response times and mitigate incidents continuously.
You'll now possess all the tools necessary to implement an effective strategy, knowing your customers also have the power to contribute to event safety.
Editor's note: This post was originally published in September 2014 and has been updated for comprehensiveness and freshness.
