When Alerts Pile Up, Nobody Reads Any of Them
About a month after our Dream Team bots started posting to a Slack channel, we were averaging 40 alerts a day: collection finished, backup succeeded, post waiting, check passed. Every one of them said 「all good」. Then a truly important 「token expiring soon」 alert sat unseen for two days. There were so many alerts that opening the channel just meant scrolling.
Three Changes
1. Routine alerts are no longer sent instantly. They are bundled into one message at 6 PM.
2. Only problems are sent immediately, with [Attention] at the very start of the title.
3. The digest opens with 「N things to check today」 before anything else.
[Evening digest] 1 thing to check today
• Check: account token reissue (3 days left)
• OK: 12 collections, 4 backups, 3 posts published
One Week Later
• Daily alerts: from about 40 to about 6 (around 5 instant alerts plus 1 digest)
• Important alerts found two days late: from 1 to 0
• Bella opens the channel less often, but reads a larger share of what she sees when she does.
What We Learned
Sending more alerts does not make you safer. You are only as safe as what actually gets read. Showing how much the bots worked and telling a person what to do are two different jobs. Routine news goes out together, once. Problems go out right away. That one distinction made the channel worth reading again.