WhatsApp has become a major alerting channel for incident response teams. It's popular and for many, a great alternative to SMS. In our 2024 recap, we mentioned how Spike sent over 25,000 alerts on WhatsApp. It is now the 2nd most used alert channel for responders on Spike (rising from 4th spot in 2023).
But... I will be the first one to admit – the WhatsApp alerts experience needed work to help responders react to incidents quicker!
WhatsApp Alerts and Actions Before Optimization
At Spike, we’ve always supported instant Acknowledge and Resolve actions across all alert channels—without requiring responders to visit the dashboard or mobile app. This is critical for incident response since faster actions reduce Mean Time to Acknowledge (MTTA) and Mean Time to Resolve (MTTR).
But in the previous version of WhatsApp alerts, taking action wasn’t as seamless. Responders had to manually type:
- ACK {incident ID} to acknowledge
- RES {incident ID} to resolve
Manually replying to messages just to acknowledge or resolve an incident felt clunky. It wasn’t the most efficient way to handle alerts quickly, and in many cases, typing the commands took longer than it should have.
Personally, I found it frustrating. The incident ID format included a hyphen (-), which made typing it out even more tedious. A simple action shouldn’t require this much effort.
So, we set out to make WhatsApp alerts more intuitive, leveraging our knowledge of WhatsApp bots and real user data from Spike.
What Actions do Responders Want to Take on WhatsApp?
To improve WhatsApp alerting, we started with a simple question:
What are the three most common actions users take when they receive an incident alert?
Two were obvious:
1. Acknowledge
2. Resolve
3. ??? (We weren’t sure what this should be—yet.)
Here are the 3 options we considered -
At first, we thought of adding an Escalate button. It made sense intuitively. But when we looked at data, something unexpected stood out.
The Data tells a Different Story
When we talk to teams about incident response, a common theme emerges: the goal is to respond to incidents everything within Slack or Microsoft Teams – or automating them to go to JIRA / Linear directly without needing to open the Spike app. So, we assumed the same logic would apply to WhatsApp alerts.
Naturally, our instinct was to add something powerful for the third action—maybe running a Playbook automation or triggering a script. These actions are used more often than people realize, and they felt like a strong fit.
Initially, Escalate seemed like the obvious choice.
Data points that out that responders don’t manually actually escalate incidents that often.
I rarely escalate when I’m on-call—we all want to handle the incident ourselves with other on-call members. And if that’s the case for me, it’s may be true for many others. Data didn't show signs of manual escalations being used too much in favor of automatic escalations.
So, did Escalate really deserve a permanent spot on every WhatsApp alert? It didn’t sit right.
Google Analytics showed us that the Incidents Page was actually the most visited page on Spike. That told us responders still check for more details, even when they’re familiar with an incident.
The takeaway? People don’t always need another action—they need context. We considered letting users fetch more details inside WhatsApp, but that led to a different problem…
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The Problem with Fetching More Details
Fetching details sounds simple—until you realize how much information is tied to an incident. What would responders actually want?
• Incident Payload
• Comments & Notes
• Responders
• Incident context (Suppressed & Repeated times, Priority, Severity)
• Activity Log
• Incident Links
We could send all this info inside WhatsApp, but it would create too many interactions:
1. Fetch details? Sure.
2. But which details? 100% but choose from six options.
3. ...And WhatsApp’s template restrictions make this even harder.
This friction made us rethink everything. Instead of overcomplicating WhatsApp alerts, we simplified:
The third action became “Open Incident in App.”
Whether it’s reading the incident payload, adding responders, or checking comments—everything responders need is already available in the mobile app.
When an alert comes in, the first instinct isn’t just to take action—it’s to understand and investigate the incident. This is something we all do.
To validate this, we ran a POC internally for two weeks. We learnt that the new WhatsApp alerts felt natural, and combining them with Spike’s mobile app just clicked. Jumping from WhatsApp alert to the mobile app for incident context takes no time and it's sooo intuitive.
What's interesting is we had assumed that responders getting WhatsApp alerts wouldn’t download the Spike app. But this update challenged that assumption.
Honestly? I don’t mind either way. If users prefer handling incidents solely through WhatsApp, that’s great because how you receive alerts is a personal choice. But during those two weeks, we realized something important:
WhatsApp alerts + Spike’s mobile app is a match made in on-call heaven.
The Final Solution – Three Simple Actions
To keep things smooth and intuitive, every WhatsApp alert now comes with:
✅ Acknowledge
✅ Resolve
✅ Open Incident in App
Rather than forcing responders to tap through multiple options, they can now jump straight into the app—where all the data they need is already structured perfectly.
This is a big step toward making mobile alerting frictionless.
We DON'T have he Impact With Us
We were excited to release this update and measure how many users started using WhatsApp to acknowledge and resolve incidents.. like truly measure the impact.
But… there was a small problem ☄️
We weren’t tracking the source of Acknowledge/Resolve actions.
What stings, though, is that we’ll never have past data—which means no way to analyze trends or draw a trajectory over time for these alert channels. But hey, these things happen. If there’s one thing we know for sure, incidents are inevitable.
On the bright side, we noticed something encouraging: a clear uptick in mobile app installs. This suggests responders are shifting toward managing incidents directly in the Spike app. And that’s a big win.
For now, this is just the start. If you’re using WhatsApp for incident response, we’d love to hear your thoughts. What’s working well? What would you improve?
🔗 Related Reading:
• Frequently Asked Questions about Incident Management