Customer ServicePrioritize Your Home Security With Alarm.com's Voice Notifications
Hey, guys. Hayden here again from Alarm System Store. And today we're going to be talking about alarm.com's voice notification feature. This is an add on that you can add to any alarm.com plan as long as you have the app for alarm.com, and you can set up notifications for it. So essentially what the voice notifications do is it provides you with the ability to get, automated phone calls as notification options.
So there are two versions of the voice notification set up. There is voice notifications for alarms, and then there is voice notifications for non alarms, which would be just any other event that can happen. So they are two separated add-ons. And the alarms one is cheaper because you're going to have a lot less alarms than you are just general notifications. So essentially I don't have pricing the top of my head, but the alarms option is a bit cheaper than the non alarms option. But essentially what we're going to do today is we're just going to look at how you set it up real quick. And then I'll show you guys how it works. It's pretty straightforward.
So first thing we're going to do is basically I'm just going to screen record my phone. I already have the voice notification set up, but I'm going to show you guys basically how how you would set it up if you added it to your account. And then I'm going to trigger a panic on the alarm system, and I'll let you guys listen to the call. It might be a little bit hard to understand because it's it's an automated call through my phone and then through the microphone that I have. So hopefully it's clear enough. But essentially, let me get the screen recording going to pull up your alarm.com, and then once you get to your home page, you can just go to the more option or settings, depending on whether you're on Android or iPhone, but you just go into your notification settings.
So by default everybody has the alarms notification turned on. So essentially you're just going to edit the recipients. So if you get the voice notifications for alarms it gives that alarm notification the ability to add a phone number to call. So if we click on Manage recipients, you can see that the first one they're active notifications is for alarm. So click on that so once you pull up the alarm notification, as you can see here, I have this phone as my push notification option, my email as my email, and my phone number as the SMS and voice options. Here. So as you can see, normally what people would have is just the first three that are listed here. This voice option is what's new.
So essentially all you have to do is click add up here at the top. And then you can create a new contact. And that is going to be your voice contact. Now if you one thing I do wish alarm.com would do is allow you to basically edit your address book because, I do have a lot of numbers and options plugged in here. I used to have an old number, and I also have, a couple iterations of my phone number trying to set up voice notifications. But essentially once you get your number added, you just choose your number under the recipients and it just gets added to the recipients for this notification. But essentially once that's added that's all you have to do. You just go in, plug your phone number in, choose it as a recipient. And now any time that this alarm goes off, it's going to give me that automated call.
So once you have your voice notification preferences set for your notifications, all you really have to do is test. So coming over to the IQ panel, we're just going to click the auxiliary panic here. And I don't have the siren turned on. So you don't have to worry about that. It will announce that a panic has been triggered though. So the emergency reported. Emergency reported. And since we're on alarm.com already, you can see all the different types of notifications popping up there. I can cancel or verify the alarm emergency straight through the app, but I'm going to cancel here. And here's the phone call from A 571 number. Let me put it on speaker. This is an alarm message for IQ demo system from our alarm system store. An emergency panic alarm was recorded by the system keypad at 5:13 p.m. on Tuesday, September 3rd, 2024. To hear this message again, press three to manage voice notification settings, visit the mobile app or website to up. Okay, so as you can tell, it's basically just an automated robot saying, hey, this alarm system that's connected to this service had an emergency panic reported at this time and date, now that is what you get whenever you have a panic alarm go off. There are additional features whenever you have like a regular burglary alarm go off. So if I had had a door contact and actually triggered an alarm, using a contact, it would give you the option to type in a code so that you can disarm your system through the phone call.
So each different type of alarm is going to have a different, you know, announcement obviously. But some of them do offer additional options, such as verifying the alarm or typing in your code so you can disarm it, so on and so forth. So it can be very handy, for those I know it's very handy for iPhone users because, from what I've heard, iPhone does limit your ability to set up, like, notification sounds. I have an Android, so I don't know how that works, but essentially, a lot of our iPhone users like this feature because they can actually tie a specific, ringtone to that number, that alarm.com calls from. And that way whenever you get that call, you know exactly what it is before you even answer it.
So if you have an iPhone, it would be very handy thing to have. However, it does work for pretty much any type of setup. I know there's some people that like to use alarm.com from a tablet, or even some that just like to use it from a computer. And if you're at work, for example, if you have your own work number, you can plug a work number in there and that will call you at work and let you know that something's happened with your alarm system.
Now, there is one caveat you guys need to keep in mind whenever you go to add the service. And that is that the feature just sometimes doesn't work. And I know that's kind of a weird thing to say after, you know, showing how well it works and whatnot. But essentially, there have been over the last few years, some legality changes regarding automated phone calls. And I don't know if that's specific to like alarm systems or alarm service, so on and so forth. I don't know the details of it all, but essentially, whenever alarm.com started this feature, it worked flawlessly. Everybody managed to get notifications. All of the different types, so on and so forth. However, in the last, probably a year or so, they were going to discontinue this service. And that is because it was essentially a service that nobody knew about. For one and two, the laws regarding those automated calls were getting a little stringent. So I think it is a lot of work for them to maintain, this voice notification feature. However, after they announced that they were planning on discontinuing it, there was a giant kickback.
So they revamped it and they've been working on it. About a month ago, I was actually going to shoot this video and I could not get it to work on my phone, period. I had it set up properly. I done days worth of testing. I would come in every day, see if it works, if it did, and so on and so forth. And I kind of gave up for a little bit. I have Mint mobile, so I don't know if that really if the service provider for your phone has anything to do with it. But essentially there were some issues getting it to work on my phone. So, just keep that in mind after you add it with your service provider. It is something that you're going to want to test. And I don't think that's necessarily like an alarm.com issue. I think just from what I've heard about it, a lot of it comes down to the laws changing about the way that automated calls can be sent to a user. And whenever that happened, they they changed the way that they had to essentially get these notifications out to you. And I think over time they have kind of worked that out.
And to my knowledge, alarm.com is the only provider currently that is able to provide phone calls for alarm notifications. And now, as far as Central Station goes, that's a live person calling you after they receive a signal. So that's completely different. They are going to do their job in respond to the alarm dispatching services and so on. This particular service is tied directly to the self-monitoring interactive aspect of alarm.com. So like I said, just whenever you go to add it, just make sure you test it and that it works well for you. And then you can let your, service provider know if you want to keep it or if you want to get rid of it, whatever the case is. but with that being said, as you can see, it is a very handy feature to have. Like I said, it'll give you a phone call so you can set up your own ringtone. And that is very handy whenever it comes to actually being able to respond to your notifications. If you're like me, you kind of get numb to the normal notification sound of your phone, so you don't always think to check it as soon as it goes off.
With these calls, however, everybody looks at a call, whether it's scam likely, or whether it's, you know, somebody calling for your car or service, whatever it might be. But everybody looks at their phone when they get a call, and it's a great way to ensure that you get all of your alarm.com notifications. So if you're interested in alarm.com services at great rates and you want this add on, we do offer all of it straight from our website alarm system store.com. So by all means head over there. Check it out. I'll leave links to it all down below. You can take a look at them and for those of you that are on YouTube, give us a like and subscribe if you don't mind and I will catch you guys on the next one.
So there are two versions of the voice notification set up. There is voice notifications for alarms, and then there is voice notifications for non alarms, which would be just any other event that can happen. So they are two separated add-ons. And the alarms one is cheaper because you're going to have a lot less alarms than you are just general notifications. So essentially I don't have pricing the top of my head, but the alarms option is a bit cheaper than the non alarms option. But essentially what we're going to do today is we're just going to look at how you set it up real quick. And then I'll show you guys how it works. It's pretty straightforward.
So first thing we're going to do is basically I'm just going to screen record my phone. I already have the voice notification set up, but I'm going to show you guys basically how how you would set it up if you added it to your account. And then I'm going to trigger a panic on the alarm system, and I'll let you guys listen to the call. It might be a little bit hard to understand because it's it's an automated call through my phone and then through the microphone that I have. So hopefully it's clear enough. But essentially, let me get the screen recording going to pull up your alarm.com, and then once you get to your home page, you can just go to the more option or settings, depending on whether you're on Android or iPhone, but you just go into your notification settings.
So by default everybody has the alarms notification turned on. So essentially you're just going to edit the recipients. So if you get the voice notifications for alarms it gives that alarm notification the ability to add a phone number to call. So if we click on Manage recipients, you can see that the first one they're active notifications is for alarm. So click on that so once you pull up the alarm notification, as you can see here, I have this phone as my push notification option, my email as my email, and my phone number as the SMS and voice options. Here. So as you can see, normally what people would have is just the first three that are listed here. This voice option is what's new.
So essentially all you have to do is click add up here at the top. And then you can create a new contact. And that is going to be your voice contact. Now if you one thing I do wish alarm.com would do is allow you to basically edit your address book because, I do have a lot of numbers and options plugged in here. I used to have an old number, and I also have, a couple iterations of my phone number trying to set up voice notifications. But essentially once you get your number added, you just choose your number under the recipients and it just gets added to the recipients for this notification. But essentially once that's added that's all you have to do. You just go in, plug your phone number in, choose it as a recipient. And now any time that this alarm goes off, it's going to give me that automated call.
So once you have your voice notification preferences set for your notifications, all you really have to do is test. So coming over to the IQ panel, we're just going to click the auxiliary panic here. And I don't have the siren turned on. So you don't have to worry about that. It will announce that a panic has been triggered though. So the emergency reported. Emergency reported. And since we're on alarm.com already, you can see all the different types of notifications popping up there. I can cancel or verify the alarm emergency straight through the app, but I'm going to cancel here. And here's the phone call from A 571 number. Let me put it on speaker. This is an alarm message for IQ demo system from our alarm system store. An emergency panic alarm was recorded by the system keypad at 5:13 p.m. on Tuesday, September 3rd, 2024. To hear this message again, press three to manage voice notification settings, visit the mobile app or website to up. Okay, so as you can tell, it's basically just an automated robot saying, hey, this alarm system that's connected to this service had an emergency panic reported at this time and date, now that is what you get whenever you have a panic alarm go off. There are additional features whenever you have like a regular burglary alarm go off. So if I had had a door contact and actually triggered an alarm, using a contact, it would give you the option to type in a code so that you can disarm your system through the phone call.
So each different type of alarm is going to have a different, you know, announcement obviously. But some of them do offer additional options, such as verifying the alarm or typing in your code so you can disarm it, so on and so forth. So it can be very handy, for those I know it's very handy for iPhone users because, from what I've heard, iPhone does limit your ability to set up, like, notification sounds. I have an Android, so I don't know how that works, but essentially, a lot of our iPhone users like this feature because they can actually tie a specific, ringtone to that number, that alarm.com calls from. And that way whenever you get that call, you know exactly what it is before you even answer it.
So if you have an iPhone, it would be very handy thing to have. However, it does work for pretty much any type of setup. I know there's some people that like to use alarm.com from a tablet, or even some that just like to use it from a computer. And if you're at work, for example, if you have your own work number, you can plug a work number in there and that will call you at work and let you know that something's happened with your alarm system.
Now, there is one caveat you guys need to keep in mind whenever you go to add the service. And that is that the feature just sometimes doesn't work. And I know that's kind of a weird thing to say after, you know, showing how well it works and whatnot. But essentially, there have been over the last few years, some legality changes regarding automated phone calls. And I don't know if that's specific to like alarm systems or alarm service, so on and so forth. I don't know the details of it all, but essentially, whenever alarm.com started this feature, it worked flawlessly. Everybody managed to get notifications. All of the different types, so on and so forth. However, in the last, probably a year or so, they were going to discontinue this service. And that is because it was essentially a service that nobody knew about. For one and two, the laws regarding those automated calls were getting a little stringent. So I think it is a lot of work for them to maintain, this voice notification feature. However, after they announced that they were planning on discontinuing it, there was a giant kickback.
So they revamped it and they've been working on it. About a month ago, I was actually going to shoot this video and I could not get it to work on my phone, period. I had it set up properly. I done days worth of testing. I would come in every day, see if it works, if it did, and so on and so forth. And I kind of gave up for a little bit. I have Mint mobile, so I don't know if that really if the service provider for your phone has anything to do with it. But essentially there were some issues getting it to work on my phone. So, just keep that in mind after you add it with your service provider. It is something that you're going to want to test. And I don't think that's necessarily like an alarm.com issue. I think just from what I've heard about it, a lot of it comes down to the laws changing about the way that automated calls can be sent to a user. And whenever that happened, they they changed the way that they had to essentially get these notifications out to you. And I think over time they have kind of worked that out.
And to my knowledge, alarm.com is the only provider currently that is able to provide phone calls for alarm notifications. And now, as far as Central Station goes, that's a live person calling you after they receive a signal. So that's completely different. They are going to do their job in respond to the alarm dispatching services and so on. This particular service is tied directly to the self-monitoring interactive aspect of alarm.com. So like I said, just whenever you go to add it, just make sure you test it and that it works well for you. And then you can let your, service provider know if you want to keep it or if you want to get rid of it, whatever the case is. but with that being said, as you can see, it is a very handy feature to have. Like I said, it'll give you a phone call so you can set up your own ringtone. And that is very handy whenever it comes to actually being able to respond to your notifications. If you're like me, you kind of get numb to the normal notification sound of your phone, so you don't always think to check it as soon as it goes off.
With these calls, however, everybody looks at a call, whether it's scam likely, or whether it's, you know, somebody calling for your car or service, whatever it might be. But everybody looks at their phone when they get a call, and it's a great way to ensure that you get all of your alarm.com notifications. So if you're interested in alarm.com services at great rates and you want this add on, we do offer all of it straight from our website alarm system store.com. So by all means head over there. Check it out. I'll leave links to it all down below. You can take a look at them and for those of you that are on YouTube, give us a like and subscribe if you don't mind and I will catch you guys on the next one.