Tuning alerts so you stop ignoring them

Tuning alerts so you stop ignoring them
It was a Wednesday when a travel brand admitted their listening alerts had become wallpaper — 60 a day, all muted. They rebuilt the system from zero.

The turn was ruthless thresholds. Step one: delete every keyword-only alert; volume alone is noise. Step two: build compound triggers — volume above 2x baseline AND sentiment down 10 points. Step three: tier them — a 'glance' tier for trends, a 'wake someone' tier for crises. Step four: route each tier to a different channel so the urgent one never hides in the stream.

The rebuild cut daily alerts from 60 to about 4, and those 4 mattered. Two weeks later the 'wake someone' tier fired exactly once — a real refund-policy backlash — and the team caught it in nine minutes.

The takeaway: an alert you ignore is worse than no alert. Use compound triggers, tier by urgency, route by tier — fewer alarms, every one of them real.