Home to 8,000 residents and over 4 million annual visitors, Banff is a small town with a big city feel located in the beautiful Rocky Mountains.
In 2013, Larissa Barlow started working for the Town of Banff in a communications role. Just a few weeks into her role, there was a major flood in the area. At the time, the primary means of communication was the website and social media. The flooding event showed how important it was to have an emergency communications person equipped with the right tools to share updates with residents (known as Banffites)
Today, the Town of Banff uses Voyent Alert as its multi-purpose notification system. In addition to fires, floods and other emergencies, Banff uses Voyent Alert to notify residents about power outages, fire bans, special events, road closures and requests for public input.
Banffites can choose the topics for which they want to receive notifications and the town can geo-target the alerts. For example, Larissa plans to send snow removal reminders so will draw a box on a map to notify only the relevant citizens. The ability to send targeted messages has led to strong community adoption and a low unsubscribe rate.
Prior to Voyent Alert, the Town of Banff was using the notification system that was built into their website but had outgrown it. When it came time to switch, the team was first drawn to Voyent Alert because it could do app and voice notifications in addition to text and email unlike the previous system. Furthermore, the pricing was both lower and fixed so there wouldn’t be unpleasant surprise charges for extra text messages.
"Everytime we came over a certain threshold of SMS subscriptions, the previous system came with an additional cost. And that would always spike when we would advertise the program … it just seemed like we needed something that was more stable and fixed fee. Something that had more options because we didn’t have the telephone ability. The app is really great too."
The transition to Voyent Alert from the previous system was smooth. Voyent Alert’s support team helped transition the subscribers from old system and train Banff staff. Overall, the community response has been very positive and residents appreciate how easy it is to sign up for alerts.
“We are closely connected to other communities. So it is important to have that shared space for any type of emergencies.”
Larissa is looking forward to more nearby communities coming online with Voyent Alert so Banffites can stay choose to receive updates from neighbouring towns and the regional district government.
