Emergency texts are designed to mitigate dangers and protect the safety of a receiving party, but they must be conducted properly and in a timely fashion.
When a user receives a text message warning them of an emergency situation, they should see it in time to get them out of harm's way. Impending storms – or in the case of many college programs, dangerous individuals on campus – should result in emergency SMS messages, but that communication must happen right away.
At the University of Southern California, students received a text alert after an alleged sexual assault took place on campus early Tuesday morning. The problem is, the text message wasn't received until late that night. Therefore, the entire student body went about their business on Tuesday completely oblivious to the fact that a dangerous criminal was at large on campus.
This worried a number of students, including junior Kamille Hayes, who expressed her dissatisfaction to the local CBS affiliate.
"The alert was alarming in itself. I mean you can't stop crying, but we should have known about it way before 20 hours after the incident, especially because most of us live here and our classes are near here," Hayes said. "Like this is our home when we're away from home, so we need to feel protected."
This blog has discussed the value of text alerts on college campuses before, but in order for students to truly benefit from such initiatives they must receive all messages in an appropriate amount of time. Organizations need to implement tools that promote quick and efficient bulk SMS messaging practices. Swift SMS Gateway offers the products and services needed for any company to launch effective text alerts.
