Boston University Police affirmed the school will continue to look for ways to improve campus security, after receiving an ‘A’ grade for safety from Reader’s Digest.

“Certainly I would not rest on my laurels from the fact that I got an ‘A’ from a Reader’s Digest survey,” BU Police Department Chief Thomas Robbins said. “We’re constantly striving to improve public safety here. That’s the mandate that I’ve been given from President Brown.”

BU was ranked 11th of the 135 colleges and universities that voluntarily participated in the survey, according to the magazine’s website. Survey questions included whether dormitory doors have locks, chains and peepholes and the extent of safety discussion at orientation. It also looked at whether a school had a mass emergency notification system in place, such as the one Northern Illinois University used to successfully inform its community of danger shortly after Thursday’s shooting.

Although Robbins has not heard many complaints about Send Word Now calls after two test runs, he said he is aware students turn off their phones in class or have poor reception in certain areas of campus, which could hamper its effectiveness.

SWN Chief Strategy Officer and co-founder Michael Sher said many universities and schools use the system and give feedback on ways to improve services.

“We’ve worked a lot on our speed and scalability,” he said.

SWN can trace the path for every message it sends to determine a problem’s cause, but it cannot trace messages without permission, Sher said.

He said SWN has made two breakthroughs in the last several months. One university, which Sher declined to name because of SWN’s strict privacy policy, made 30,000 calls in less than 20 minutes during a test. The service was also able to send 36,000 text messages in 13 minutes.

“We’re going to be doubling that capacity within the next couple of months so everywhere comes in faster,” Sher said. “Every day when our customers use the service, we learn how to get even better and stronger and faster. Our customers push us to keep making it better.”

Robbins said BU works with SWN and cell phone service providers to ensure the BU community receives emails, text messages and phone calls in the event of an emergency.

“We’ve had a lot of communication and we do have a group that meets regularly in terms of updating the process and where we’re at with Send Word Now and the ability to communicate across a broad spectrum in a relatively short amount of time,” Robbins said.

Robbins said BU officials have met with other “similarly-situated colleges and universities” to share information with SWN and correct problem areas.

“I think the key thing to focus on is number one: getting the word out as fast as we can,” Robbins said. “We don’t expect perfection . . . If you’re in a basement corner of a building and for some reason a black spot, we expect people in that vicinity in that building to get it and spread it by word of mouth.”