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How to use SMS for internal communications

Internal communications are a function responsible for effective, efficient and timely communication of business-critical information to a workforce.

It may help to achieve compliance, improve employee engagement and deliver improved business productivity. Good internal communication enables conversations up, down and across an organisation.

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Reasons for internal communications

Companies use a wide variety of channels to communicate business or management decisions, report key information or deliver motivational messages. This variety allows internal communications teams to match the message with the best channel in order to achieve maximum impact.

Channels include:

  • Face-to-face
    • Events
    • Team meetings
  • Electronic
    • Email
    • Intranet
    • SMS
  • Printed/written
    • Newsletters
    • Posters
    • Desk drops

On the delivery side, having multiple channels to deliver your internal communications is only half the story. You also need to know that you can count on your messages arriving. Without that complete trust in delivery rates it’s harder to focus on the ‘what’ you are going to say and more time gets wasted on ‘how you are going to deliver it’.

How SMS can improve internal communications

As an internal communications channel, SMS is increasingly being used by companies to communicate with their employees and for employees to communicate with one another because it is an efficient form of communications, is very cost-effective, and text messages get read. In fact, 90 percent of text messages get read within 90 second of delivery.

When time is of the essence, the internal communications team must have the capacity to deliver messages – fast. When the content of a message is critically important, services that allow for detailed messaging with the highest level of successful delivery are vital.

As such, the ‘killer’ SMS application for internal communications is emergency notifications and alerts. This could be anything from server outages to disasters. With SMS you can target employees at specific locations, from various teams, or at different management levels. SMS your fire wardens about a drill, send a message to the management team alerting them to the release of financial results, or advise all staff on the third floor that the dishwasher isn’t working.

Office announcements, staff rosters, shift patterns, corporate news, holiday requests, salary payments and IT notifications are just some other examples of information that can be shared via SMS broadcasts.

From an easy-to-use web interface, internal communications teams can simultaneously send thousands of messages to staff that arrive on mobile handsets instantaneously. And what’s more, SMS allows for two-way communication, providing a feedback loop and opportunity for employee response.

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Final thoughts, further reading

If you’re also interested in how else SMS can help your business, make sure to check out: