Identifying the Gems in the Noise: How to Reduce Alert Fatigue

In the context of Locale, an alerting and incident management tool built for ops teams, notification overload is synonymous with alert fatigue. One of the most important skills a member of the operations team needs is being able to find a sign in all the chaos. Ops teams should not only be alerted when important incidents arise but should also be able to take action on those alerts.

Alert fatigue is a prevalent issue in businesses overwhelmed with irrelevant notifications, leading to critical alerts being ignored or silenced. This can result in missed opportunities and unchecked operational incidents, eroding trust in the alerting system. To address this, businesses should customise and prioritise alerts to provide employees with relevant and actionable information, fostering a proactive approach to managing events and restoring confidence in the alerting process.

We have already covered the best practices for setting up an alert in a previous post linked above. In case you missed that, the TL;DR version is below:

• Alert on the right platform
• Make the alert contextual to enable a quick action can be taken
• Provide a buffer time to act after the alert has been triggered
• Set priorities while setting up the alert

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How Locale users avoid alert fatigue?

Along with setting up good actionable alerts, our users go beyond the standard flow to optimise conversation on other platforms. This way only people who are involved with the alert get updates, saving other team members from constant notification.

A few practices which our users follow to get the best out of our platform and have our product feel almost invisible.

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Notification Grouping

Rather than sending repetitive alerts, notifications can be grouped over a time period into a single summary alert. For instance, instead of multiple alerts every minute, configure a summary alert every 10 minutes about new incidents. Thoughtful consolidation provides awareness and retains urgency while mitigating disruption from excessive alerts.

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Escalation Matrix

Alerts can be designed to automatically escalate to higher levels if not resolved within a defined timeframe. By setting up this escalation matrix, notify the right people at the right time based on severity and response needs. Thoughtful escalations distribute notifications, avoiding unnecessary interruptions while still driving accountability.

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Setup Playbooks

Attach clear playbooks to alerts to guide response. Playbooks outline required actions for resolving incidents. By specifying post-notification steps in playbook form, alerts become more actionable for recipients. Directly integrating response instructions enables teams to work from consistent playbooks when incidents occur.

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Cadence of Alerts

Alerts can be set for events that happen in real-time or at a scheduled time. Real-time alerts send notifications as events occur. Scheduled alerts send summary on hourly, daily, weekly or custom cadences based on configured rules. This combined approach allows customised alerting tied to both live data and defined schedules.

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Group Similar Alerts Together

Consolidate related alerts through summarisation and grouping. For example, a D2C company could configure one summary alert for "Shipment not packed" and "Delivery truck not arrived" events. Recipients get a single notification encompassing mutually inclusive issues. Thoughtful consolidation mitigates excessive alerts while retaining awareness of underlying events.

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Auto Resolution

Once incidents are addressed, alerts can automatically clear based on data flowing into the system. Auto-resolution reduces the responder workload and enables teams to focus on core business priorities.

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Conclusion

When it comes to information overload, many people think of gems among the noise. In order to find the gem, you need to hone in on the information that matters and discard what’s irrelevant.

Locale helps automates all of that manual process and makes sure that your operations teams spend time taking action instead of fiddling through data. But to be effective in their jobs, operations teams need the most relevant data at the right time to the right people — or else they end up with alert fatigue.

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Want to know more about how Locale helps you manage incidents? Book a call with one of our specialists to have all your questions answered today! Too good to be true? There is magic in the world, you just haven't seen it yet😌

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