ROCHESTER, N.Y. - June 17, 2020 - Asher Group, the company behind the Hyper-Reach Emergency Notification System, today announced AlertSmart™, the first emergency notification system to make smart speakers accessible to public safety officials.

AlertSmart is initially available only through Amazon Alexa-enabled smart speakers, such as the Echo, Echo Dot, and similar devices, including third-party devices manufactured by others. But that's a good start. With more than 100 million devices sold and over 70,000 Alexa-compatible devices and services, Amazon Alexa is the dominant brand among the estimated 90 million people in the US who own a smart speaker.

For Alexa, AlertSmart is a skill that must be enabled on a customer's Alexa device. As part of the enablement process, the customer authorizes the use of the device location. Enablement is fast and easy. The customer just says "Alexa, enable Hyper-Reach" and follows the instructions provided by the unit. The whole process takes less than a minute. More details can be found at: https://www.hyper-reach.com/alexa/.

Once enabled, when a local public safety or emergency manager sends a relevant message for that location, a notification is triggered on the Alexa device. The customer then asks Alexa to play the notification and the customer gets the message.

AlertSmart is free to Alexa users and is included in the standard Hyper-Reach Emergency Notification System for Public Safety. There is no extra cost for existing Hyper-Reach customers to add AlertSmart to their Hyper-Reach service.

AlertSmart is just one of the many ways that Hyper-Reach helps public safety and emergency management agencies reach the public. In addition to smart speakers, Hyper-Reach can deliver voice messages to landline and mobile phones, text messages, email, social media, web-browser push notification, smartphone apps, Internet-based advertising, RSS feeds, and many other methods.

"We're thrilled to add AlertSmart to the list of Hyper-Reach benefits," said Sam Asher, president of Asher Group. "Even before AlertSmart, Hyper-Reach provided more ways to deliver messages to the public than any of its competitors. With the addition of AlertSmart, we're giving public safety and emergency management agencies the most effective tools available for reaching the public."

To find out more about Hyper-Reach, go to www.hyper-reach.com.

Media Contact
Jim Veilleux, Asher Group
jveilleux@ashergroup.com