Frequently Asked Questions?

• Hosted ENS. Hosted, Saas, outsourced model - call it what you will - with few exceptions, it does not make sense to purchase hardware for your ENS. Subscribing to a centralized, shared ENS is the most cost effective way to get the benefits of a large, fast and efficient system. Purchasing your own hardware and using your own telephone and communication facilities almost always costs more and provides less.
• Communications suited to your population. If your population primarily uses mobile phones, your ENS should natively send SMS messages (not using an email to SMS gateway) as well as deliver voice messsages. If your population is geared to look at Tweets, then Twitter should be part of your solution. If your population is spread across a geographically wide area, then loudspeakers are not probably a good choice.

  Currently, the media most used for ENS are:

  • Voice phone. Most people have a phone. Most people respond to a ringing phone. Most people communicate most comfortably over the phone.
  • Text Messaging. SMS (short message service) Text Messaging is highly effective for delivering a brief message to a large number of people very quickly. You should make sure your ENS uses true SMS.

    Beware of ENS's that offer Text Messaging through an Email-to-SMS gateway. Most mobile phone companies do offer a way to send a text message to their subscribers via email, but these email gateways are unreliable and unpredictable. Delivering a message can take minutes instead of seconds. The message is often loaded with boilerplate headers and footers, using up the precious little space there is for writing your specific message. Finally, messages sent via email to an SMS gateway are as likely as not to be tagged as SPAM and discarded right at the gateway.

  • Emergency Boards. These electronic signs have become fairly popular in recent years. An ENS should integrate with your electronic signage, if possible, so that when a message goes out to people, it can simultaneously be placed on the Emergency Boards.
  • Twitter. Many people are following tweets these days. While this does not replace other media, it is a contemporary medium for delivering information. Your ENS should be able to be integrated with Twitter such that people can sign up (follow) a Tweet feed.
  • FaceBook. With respect to an ENS, using FaceBook to deliver your message to a large number of people is similar to using Twitter. It does not replace traditional media such as voice phones. It is merely another avenue to reach people.
  • Email. In general, email is not ideal for emergency notification since for many people, email is not something they expect to receive at any moment. This is somewhat different for people that have RIM 'Blackberry' devices, iPhones, and Google Android phones. Also, email provides an excellent record of a message sent. For these reasons, email is an important notification medium.
  • Pagers. Many pagers are still used, even in this day of ubiquitous cell phones. Some pagers are full text devices which allow the sender to write an email which is then tranfered to the pager. For an ENS to send a message to a pager, the ENS should allow for a 2 step process: first,
  • Open Air Loudspeakers. This may seem primitive, but using strategically placed loudpseakers to deliver an audio message to a large number of people might make sense in certain circumstances. The area needs to be densely populated since sound waves don't travel very far with any kind of fidelity. Also, many people walk around with headphones firmly planted in their ears, so the volume needs to be high. The population needs to be alerted to listen for these messages. The message needs to be repeated a number of times.
• Ease of use. While many ENS's claim ease of use, few really achieve the goal. Some ENS's have complex screens to navigate. Some require you to separate your telephone recipients from your SMS text recipients and run the ENS once for each kind of medium.

  The real test of an ENS's ease of use comes in a crisis. You have little time to waste. You have a lot of pressure on you. If you need a manual to use your ENS, you will be quickly lost.

  Basically, all ENS's do the same: target a particular group of people to notify, select the message, then start! If the instructions are appreciably more complicated than that, don't be surprised if the system does not meet your expectations in a crisis.

• Avoid Reconfigured Robo-Call Systems! Two trends have been converging and it's not necessarily good for consumers. First is the increased need for Emergency Notification Systems. Second is the increased regulation on so-called robo-callers (mass marketing auto-dialers). With the abundance of robo-calling capacity due to regulations and do-not-call lists, people who run these systems are merely rebranding them to seem like Emergency Notification Systems.

  Beware. Mass-dialers are rarely built with the robustness and reliability that an emergency system needs. They will be awkward to use and have seemingly inexplicable delays and failures which you will likely only discover after using them. It's best to determine the pedigree of the system you use first, before purchasing it.

• Capacity. You need to get a system that has the capacity to alert your population quickly. Capacity for sending out telephone calls is different from capacity to sending out SMS messages. A good question to ask a prospective vendor is at what rate they will guarantee calls and text messages to be sent when you start a notification campaign. The vendor may have lots of native capacity, but if it is not available to you when you need it, it might as well not exist.

  In my many years in the telephony industry I have learned a lot about capacity, and one of those things is that everything has some capacity limitation, including your own institution's phone system and the cell towers delivering mobile service around your institution.

  We see these limitations on major calling holidays, like Mother's Day ("All circuits busy." messages). Bringing that back to notification systems, a system with the ability to call 500 phones simultaneously is going to encounter a lot of issues if your institution only has capacity for 200 simultaneous calls.

  There are various techniques to handle this problem, but they are out of the scope of this document. Suffice it to say that it is important to know your institution's capacity to receive calls and messages and make sure that an ENS will not overwhelm it.

• Reliability. Not enough can be said about reliability.

Studies have also shown that people have been reluctant to divulge information if their identity were exposed.

A hot line (or whistleblower line) is a way for someone to report an issue with some sense of confidentiality. An anonymous hot line takes this confidentiality to another level, allowing the reporter to be unknown to the person who takes action on the report.

Giving people a way to report a problem without the stigma of being a "rat" yields a higher probability that a problem will be reported.

What is Campus-Reach?
Campus-Reach is an ENS specifically designed to address the unique needs of colleges and universities. That's the basic idea, but Hyper-Reach is far from basic.

Although it is extremely easy to use, Hyper-Reach has massive capacity and sophisticated features that are designed to handle the most demanding tasks — features such as being able to send messages to TDD devices for the hearing impaired, being able to call thousands of people in an emergency or preschedule a reminder call to go out next week; features such as being able to get positive feedback from people that you call or connect them into a conference bridge; and more. ...back to top

How does Hyper-Reach work?
Once you have created an account (contact us to sign up), you may create any number of calling lists. To send a message to one of your lists (referred to as a "campaign"), simply dial our phone number (visible once you have logged in) and follow the prompts. You will be asked to either record a new message or pick an existing one, choose a list, and confirm your settings and the cost. The message is then sent to your list. Once the campaign has completed, you will be sent an e-mail notice. You may view the details of the calls on the website both while they are in progress and after they have all completed. ...back to top

That's it! From 10 calls to 10,000 or more calls, that's all it takes.

Who uses Hyper-Reach?
Hyper-Reach is currently being used by dozens of law enforcement agencies, corporations, churches, schools, and community groups.

Its powerful features, along with advanced mapping tool Accu-Reach™, make it an ideal choice for several public safety organizations that need to notify the public about emergencies from Hazardous Material (HazMat) spills to hostage situations.

Its immediate mass notification and positive response features make it the choice for mobilizing American Red Cross volunteers in New York State.

Its advanced positive ID and conferencing capabilities make it the most affordable full-featured Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery notification service available today. ...back to top

Its ease of use, complete web control, immediate reporting capabilities, and very affordable price tag make it an easy choice for dozens of churches. community groups, sports teams, and schools.

How do I enter my phone lists?
The three primary ways are to simply type them into our form, to cut and paste them from another application into our web form, or to upload a text file with the information (see next question). Additional directions can be found in the List Manager once you have logged in. We can create custom import solutions for high-volume customers. ...back to top

Can Hyper-Reach send E-Mail notifications?
Yes. To send a message to an email address, just put that address into any list. Hyper-Reach is very flexible in the way recognizes email addresses. When you need to send a notification, simply call Hyper-Reach and record your message. Hyper-Reach will send that message as an audio attachment to the email. If you have a transcribed message, the text will be sent as well as the audio. It's that simple.
And right now, there is no charge for sending messages to as many email addresses as you wish, providing there is at least one person on the list with a telephone number. ...back to top

Can I upload a list of names and numbers directly into Hyper-Reach?
Yes. There are some guidelines for the format of your list, but Hyper-Reach has a very flexible file upload capability. A simple text file with a name, telephone number, and optional email address on each line is sufficient. Alternatively, Hyper-Reach will accept an upload of a CSV (comma separated values) file, which is the most common way to export a list from almost any database or spreadsheet. ...back to top

How much does it cost?
Your cost is calculated by the length of your outgoing message, number of calls and the custom options you choose. The cost of outgoing calls is 20 cents or less per minute (depending on the pricing scheme that you choose), and there are no additional charges for out-of-area calls in the US. The system always calculates your cost prior to the call, and you must approve the pricing before the calls will be made. ...back to top

How many calls can I make?
There is no built-in limit. If you have enough minutes in your account, you can make the calls. If you are planning very high call volumes (5000 calls or more per month), we can help you manage your calling. Volume discounts may apply. Contact us for details. ...back to top

Can I stop a calling campaign?
You can stop a call campaign in progress or stop a scheduled campaign prior to its scheduled time for launch. ...back to top

What about answering machines? Or busy signals? Or if no one answers?
Our system will leave messages on answering machines, and it will reattempt calls that reach a busy signal or ring-no-answer condition. The exact time between retries and the number of retries can be configured in your account settings. ...back to top

How do I know when my campaign has completed?
Upon completion of your campaign, you will be sent an e-mail summary of call, and you may also review full details of each call on the website. ...back to top

Can you design custom calling solutions?
We have extensive experience developing very large scale calling systems through our parent company, The Asher Group. For information on custom system development including applications, capabilities and case studies, visit the Asher IVR area of the Asher Group corporate site or contact us. ...back to top