Text vs. Voice Alerting – Advantage/Disadvantages
If you are forced to choose one methodology and one methodology only to communicate your critical alert messages to a large audience, what would that methodology be? The best way to arrive at an answer is to examine the advantages and disadvantages for using text as opposed to voice for critical alert messages.
If you need to communicate a critical message to a single individual and you are acquainted with that person, a voice message would be very appropriate. But what happens when you need to communicate a critical alert message to a wide range of people, some of whom may be unknown to you. Will a voice message still suffice? When the communication of a message is critical, which medium – voice or text — offers a superior methodology? Both communicate, but one offers several advantages. A critical message should not have to be committed to memory. Who among us has a photographic memory or perfect recall of what has been communicated to us verbally. Not many people have this ability. A text message can be stored on the communication device and recalled for future reference. Voice messaging offers no such capabilities. In addition, response paging devices are much less costly, ranging in price up to $150. Voice pagers and WiFi devices cost between $300 to $500 and do not provide assurance that your critical message has been received and is being responded to. A response paging device, using text as its communication medium, allows you to confirm that your message has been received and even who and how the recipient is responding to your critical message. When the content of a message is critical, text is by far the superior communication medium for relaying that message