How Communities are Staying Connected Through Covid-19
The damage that COVID has caused transcends just physical symptoms, as many people are experiencing mental anxiety as well. Quarantines have left people isolated and lonely as necessary human interaction has dwindled to unhealthy levels. The ability to stay in contact with one another is not a luxury, it is essential, and IRIO is innovating to adapt and use its platform to rekindle our communication. Here’s how two unique solutions, TextChecks and Emergency Messaging, are helping communities stay connected through COVID.
TextChecks
As the COVID curve begins to flatten and the country slowly re-opens, questions regarding the return to work are on the fore-front of many people’s minds. When can I return to the workplace? Is it safe to return to work? What will procedure changes look like? etc. And as an employer, it’s important to listen to your employees, hear their thoughts and opinions, and make sure that they feel safe, relevant and informed.
TextChecks is a survey solution via text that allows companies to send out a survey to their employees asking questions about COVID-19 and returning to work. TextChecks enables you to send questions, ideas, etc., collect the responses, communicate with employees directly over text and broadcast a message out to teams or the entire staff. This functionality is complementary for such things as obtaining feedback from employees, polling employees with options for new procedures, confirming compliance, and communicating new procedures as they are implemented.
Since the TextChecks survey can be customized to ask the questions you want to ask, it can be adapted to any situation that may arise and be specified according to your business’ operations. You can use it to help make the return to work as smooth as possible. Additionally, it can also just be a great way to reach out to your employees and let them know you are thinking about them!
Emergency Messaging
Text messages have legal regulations to get past before they can freely be sent to recipients. Policy from the FCC and TCPA require people to opt in before receiving messages. But what about emergencies?
Let’s say that a handful of your residents have opted out or refrain from agreeing to texting. What happens if there is a gas leak or one of your residents test positive for COVID and you need to immediately broadcast the message to your whole community at once?
The Emergency Messaging solution could be the answer. In the case of genuine and true emergencies, you are allowed to bypass the subscriber requirement and notify all staff and residents of any threat.
The reason why this solution is so important is because text messages have an open rate of 98% and read rates of 90% within the first three minutes. If you need to get information out fast, a broadcasted text with a quick click of a button should be a no brainer, and if you’re looking for a way to get the feature implemented into your own community, the best place to start would be with IRIO. IRIO’s custom mobile engagement platform pioneered the Emergency Message solution and is being used by many clients currently today.
Here are some real examples of IRIO communities using Emergency Messaging:
There was even an instance of a property notifying its residents that a child was lost in the welcome center!
Don’t let social distancing and working from home keep you disconnected! We are healthiest and happiest when we are in community with one another, and these solutions will help hold your community together.