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How Legal Firms Are Responding to COVID-19

Posted on October 8, 2020   by Casey Houser

We recently completed a case study with a legal firm that has been a customer of ours since 2014. The Law Office of Stacy Jacob study shows how that particular firm is responding to the COVID-19 pandemic and mirrors what’s happening in the law industry as a whole.

Our research finds that law offices are taking measures like adopting alternative methods of working with clients, reducing workload and staffing, and looking at past economic downturns to help tackle the current state of the world. Those insights are shared here, including an overview of how Stacy Jacob has adapted to her own situation.

Using VirtualPBX to Assist With Remote Work

More often than not, Stacy Jacob is making calls from her office from a desk phone. It’s her go-to device for reaching out to clients. However, she’s seen an increased need to complete remote work since COVID-19 began affecting the operations of businesses everywhere.

Jacob’s response has been to make more of a concerted effort to use multiple devices throughout the workday. The desk phone still takes center stage, but our Call Forwarding feature has helped Jacob use her mobile phone more to take calls away from the office. She has also begun using our mobile Softphone App to return calls to clients when she is working remotely.

These combined devices allow her to keep a consistent brand image no matter where her work takes place. They have been useful by adapting to her preferred business practices, which is a key element to what many other firms are trying to achieve.

Quick Adaptation to New Tech

ABA Journal notes that the legal industry has seemed to adapt more quickly than others in order to create an effective work-from-home environment that benefits both lawyers and their clients.

Jennifer Leonard, head of the Penn Law Future of the Profession Initiative, spoke to ABA Journal and noted that law firms were suddenly moved into an area of “forced experimentation” where audio- and videoconferencing were more the norm than the exception as they respond to COVID-19.

They now regularly use conferencing tools to complete staff meetings and hold litigation with various parties.

Workplace Activity and Personnel Changes

First Legal states that litigation will need to fundamentally change and that legal firms will need to examine closely how they do business.

In particular, First Legal suggests that many firms are making personnel cuts and that regional companies are the ones being affected most. National firms tend to have more monetary reserves and will be hit less forcefully by a sudden drop in new cases.

One part of litigation that can be reformed relatively easily, says First Legal, is mediation, which has become a more common sight since the COVID-19 pandemic hit.

“Mediation can be fully remote, which allows you to further your case while minimizing the strain on local court resources,” the article notes.

Global Legal Post points to a recent survey of the legal industry by Major Lindsey & Africa that says 39 percent of its respondents had already seen a drop in workload. Global Legal Post’s article was written in May 2020.

The study notes that the biggest areas of legal practice hit are real estate and intellectual property. Perhaps it is unsurprising that, in contrast, bankruptcy legal practices reported an increase in workload for the same time period. With many businesses in other industries filing for bankruptcy (including retailers, food chains, and entertainment companies), it makes sense that some legal firms would need to help process the paperwork for those proceedings.

In order to avoid the same fate themselves, some legal practices are turning to history as a source of hope and possible inspiration to weather this storm.

Looking to Downturns Past

As laid out in a recent McKinsey article, there are a number of lessons that law firms can learn from past changes in the economy.

McKinsey says that law firms tend to fare better than other industries when the economy slows down. It connects this idea both to the fact that many businesses – because of the downturn – will need to restructure how they work and that certainty in product costs have proven steady throughout slowdowns such as the recession between 2007 and 2012.

Additionally, law firms in specific practice areas may be able to predict where the most demand, per industry, will occur as all businesses respond to the COVID-19 pandemic. Specifically, McKinsey points to the industries of healthcare and telecommunications as expected to face fewer ill effects from COVID-19 and will have their legal needs met in the coming months mostly through alliances, joint ventures, and regulatory reform.

The industries of energy, transportation, travel, and leisure may have a more difficult time weathering the pandemic, McKinsey suggests. Their legal needs will likely be met through shareholder litigation and supplier disputes.

It will be on the shoulders of law firms to look at such demand outlooks so they can take advantage of practice opportunities as they arise. Firms that already have exposure to those markets should be in a better position to take advantage of further demand as it arises.

Your Own Response to COVID-19

What we help provide for any legal firm’s needs is a chance to increase their consistency as they communicate with clients in a mix of in-office and remote work. Regardless of your areas of practice, there will be a greater demand from here forward to limit face-to-face contact with customers and firm partners as much as possible. You can see how we handle those communications needs in our Legal Services page dedicated to that profession.

Combining the use of tools such as desktop phones, our Web Phone, and the VirtualPBX Softphone for use on your desktop or mobile devices will let you complete calls from anywhere. The predictions echoed above expect this economic downturn to continue for many months. Your ability to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic well will depend on your willingness to adopt new tools and methods of work. We hope to join you as your business changes.

When Should You Use an Analog to Digital Phone Converter?

Posted on October 6, 2020   by Casey Houser

Some of our business customers approach us with analog phones that they want to use on our VoIP Phone Plans, which are digital in nature. This is entirely possible with an analog to digital phone converter. We typically recommend the Cisco SPA112 Analog Telephone Adapter (ATA).

Customers can benefit from cost savings and simple plan setup when they choose to use their existing phones. When they use analog phones with an ATA, however, they also run into limitations that VoIP phones – built for use in digital systems – don’t have.

When should you use an analog to digital phone converter? When is it best to switch to a VoIP phone? We hope to make that clear in the discussion here.

How an Analog to Digital Phone Converter Gives New Life to Your Phones

An ATA like the Cisco SPA112 can connect your analog phone to the internet. It converts signals that would normally pass through a standard telephone system to one that works through your internet service.

A brief explanation of this process is that the ATA converts analog signals to digital packets of information, and completes that process in reverse when receiving information from a call participant. This type of data conversion involves packet switching (how the internet works) and circuit switching (how analog phone systems work). You can read more detail about packet switching vs. circuit switching in our What is VoIP? guide linked here.

VoIP networks, like those VirtualPBX Phone Plans use, are not built to handle analog information, so the ATA provides conversion for data the VoIP network does not natively understand.

Our customers who use an analog to digital phone converter get to keep their existing phones. They may choose this route for a number of reasons:

Cost Savings

A new desk phone may be more money than a business has at the time of switching to a VoIP service.

Although many entry-level desk phones are affordable even for small companies, conference phones can cost several hundred dollars.

When you are planning to add VoIP phones to your lineup, it’s smart to plan for the future and get phones that will serve you well. Try not to settle on the base model when you really need all the functions of the executive model.

The executive model can be pricey, however, so a good middle ground while you’re saving money can be using an analog to digital adapter with a phone you already own. You can also supplement your existing hardware with our software options like the VirtualPBX Web Phone that runs in your web browser of desktop and mobile.

Ease of Use

Businesses such as hotel chains may have an analog phone in every room for their own customers to use. Such customers may not need all the features of an IP phone, and other pieces of business collateral, such as information sheets, may already reference the existing phones and would be difficult to update on a large scale.

In these types of situations, it can make sense to use an ATA that easily attaches to the analog phones already present in each room. Customers will still have access to all the phone functions they need, and your business can depend on the adapter to keep those phones working for years to come.

Reliability/Conservation

Phones that are still working may not be seen as expendable. In fact, we support that attitude.

We want to see our customers use electronics recycling services and upgrade their devices when possible to save from the unnecessary creation of new materials.

Several phone models in our Online Store are refurbished to aid in the effort of conservation and keep working, pre-owned phones in circulation. Our refurbished VoIP phones work as well as when they were new but are available at significant price reductions.

Whatever your reasons for keeping existing phones, an ATA can make it possible to breathe new life into those older devices. Just be aware of their limitations before moving forward.

Switching to New VoIP Phones

The advantages of VoIP phones arise largely from their simple setup and ease of use.

Auto Provisioning

When ordering a VoIP phone from VirtualPBX, it will automatically add itself to your VirtualPBX Phone Plan. You only need to plug the phone into an active broadband internet connection and plug in the phone’s power adapter.

The phone will find your phone plan and register itself as available for use. You can then add it to a user and begin making calls.

This process only takes a few minutes, and it saves you from having to mess with configuration files.

Analog phones don’t have this capability. If you’re setting up an ATA to work with your analog phone, it will require manual intervention during setup.

Feature Keys

Many VoIP phones come with physical buttons for a range of features like call forwarding and transferring calls.

These buttons turn complex processes into one-touch actions that can save you time during your workday. Even entry-level phones like the Yealink SIP-T21P have a key for transferring calls. This makes that process as simple as pressing the button and entering a users’ extension.

ATAs often have support for these types of functions. However, they only support the transmission of system data. The functions will only work through the ATA if they already exist as buttons on your analog phone. An employee who regularly needs to transfer calls, participate in conferences, or place calls on hold is well served by a phone that has these functions available.

Busy Lamp Field / Programmable Keys

Busy Lamp Field (BLF), also known as Presence, is an important part of VoIP phone plans that many VoIP phones can use to instantly show you the status of a co-worker.

Is your superior on a call? Is the sales department out to lunch? Has your programming lead left for the day? A quick look at your VoIP phone’s screen can show you those individual and department statuses. Any extension on your VirtualPBX Plan that you program into your phone has the ability to show the status of the person(s) who use that device.

Moreover, many VoIP phones come with programmable keys – also called direct station selection (DSS) keys – that can be set to reach a specific device. For instance, a receptionist could program their sales and marketing departments and their CEO into DSS keys for simple call transferring and easy automatic dialing. BLF status may be shown in DSS keys so you can see the person/department availability before completing the transfer or call.

ATAs don’t usually have access to the type of system information necessary to show BLF or program a DSS. Even an advanced analog phone with these features would be hobbled by the limitations of the ATA.

Should You Keep or Switch?

In most cases, we recommend that our customers buy new phones when they begin using VoIP. The purpose-built phones are meant to interact well with the phone system, and they give you access to all the features that come with your VirtualPBX Plan.

However, there are circumstances where an ATA might work better, at least during a transitional period for your business where you want to save money, determine which phones work best for your business, find which system features you use most, etc.

Don’t hesitate to start a chat with our team to discuss your situation. We’re happy to share our recommendations on which phones best fit your company and offer expert advice on how you can make the best use of a VirtualPBX Business Phone Plan.

G.722 vs G.711 Codecs: What’s the Difference?

Posted on October 1, 2020   by Casey Houser

When researching VoIP phones, you will find that most hardware supports multiple codecs (methods of transmitting voice information between phones). Many of our customers have wanted to know the differences between G.722 vs G.711 and how they work within a business phone system.

These two codecs are a great example of how wideband and narrowband codecs function, and they demonstrate development of this technology over a period of several decades. The following sections will define those terms and give you a wider (bad pun intended) perspective on how these options could affect how your desk phones function.

Wideband and Narrowband Codecs

In order to understand the comparison of G.722 vs G.711, it’s first necessary to learn what wideband and narrowband codecs are.

All codecs, as we’ve explained thoroughly in our What is VoIP? guide, are basically computer programs that encode and decode audio. These programs work with your phone’s hardware to create computer data from sound waves, transmit that information to a second device, and then create sound waves from that data.

There’s a lot of work that takes place within that process. Just know that codecs are analogous to languages and that phones that support more than one codec can speak more than one language.

These languages can be grouped into categories. Two primary categories are wideband and narrowband and are given these names because of the range of audio signals they can process. Wideband codecs typically handle audio frequencies between 50 Hz to 7 kHz; narrowband codecs usually work between 300 Hz and 3.4 kHz.

Wideband audio may be referred to as high-definition voice because it is able to capture a greater range of human speech, which can range from 80 Hz to 14 kHz.

A common method of rating different codecs comes with the Mean Opinion Score (MOS) that’s created from an average of callers’ reviews of the clarity of a call. As you can see in this diagram, each MOS for G.722 and G.711 are similar, but as you will read about in the following sections, they reach those high ratings in different ways.

G.711

G.711 was developed in 1972 and is part of the narrowband set of codecs. When comparing this codec with G.722, the most relevant information about G.711 to note are these two points:

• It uses an 8 kHz sampling frequency, using 8 bits per sample
• It has a 64 kbit/s bitrate

The first data point above describes the second. Every time G.711 creates an audio sample, it uses 8 bits of information. At 8 kHz multiplied by 8 bits, you get a 64 kbit bitrate.

The 64 kbit bitrate is how much bandwidth, per second, you need to available in your internet connection to handle a single phone call.

G.711 data is not compressed, so the resulting 64 kbit/s bitrate is large compared to some other codecs which use compression techniques to lower their bandwidth requirements. You can see in the chart on our VoIP Speed Test page that a similar compressed codec, G.729, can fit 16 calls into the space that one G.711 call would occupy.

G.722

Audio codecs are always improving and besting their predecessors. In 1988, G.722 was released as a wideband codec. It tries to improve on G.711 by increasing its sampling rate and using compression:

• It uses a 16 kHz sampling frequency, using 14 bits per sample
• It uses compression to achieve its bitrate of 64 kbit/s

For this codec, it begins with an uncompressed bitrate of 224 kbit/s (16 kHz * 14 bits) and reduces that figure to a usable 64 kbit/s that most modern broadband connections can easily handle.

The SB-ADPCM compression used here allows the sound quality to retain its characteristics. Therefore, when comparing G.722 vs G.711 directly, the audio of G.722 is equal to or better than its uncompressed counterpart and may offer more nuance in audio that the narrowband cannot manage.

Which of G.722 vs G.711 Is Better For You?

The answer of which codec you want to use at your own business depends on your individual circumstances. No two businesses are exactly alike in their phone plan use and daily tasks.

A chat with our team can help you decide which codecs are best for your needs. We can speak with you to determine your network bandwidth availability and the volume of calls you handle every day. Then we can recommend which codecs will work best in your situation — whether it’s G.722 vs G.711 or one of the many other codecs available for use, like those shown in the datasheet for the popular Yealink T23G desk phone.

In general, codecs with lower bandwidth requirements work best in networks without a lot of internet speed to spare, and codecs with higher requirements may work fine if your network supports their demands.

These are the types of issues we can discuss on our call. Additionally, we may also suggest Network Services like our VPN for VoIP option that helps your network prioritize traffic to keep your phone calls clear to your employees and customers. All of this will help you find a good fit of phone configuration at your company.

VirtualPBX Discusses Its Visual Design Principles

Posted on September 14, 2020   by Casey Houser

At VirtualPBX, we do more than develop Business Phone Plans and sell VoIP phones. Our marketing team uses visual design principles to better connect with its audience.

Throughout our website, emails, and print marketing materials, we project a consistent and purposeful design that caters to our audience. Our VP of Design & Marketing, Rachel Anderson, leads the marketing team in its charge to establish a professional look and create materials that are easy for our readers to understand and boost our conversions, helping readers become customers that have a clear understanding of the service they’re buying.

We asked Anderson a few questions about the particulars of the visual design principles that guide her and the entire marketing team. Her insight here will give you a detailed picture of all the visual elements you see here and throughout our work.

Our Q&A With Rachel Anderson

1. How important is visual design in VirtualPBX’s website, email campaigns, and other marketing efforts you can custom design?

Supremely!

Design always serves a purpose and caters to a particular audience. In our case, we’re designing for busy professionals who, rightly so, are concerned about their business communications. We should never waste their time and we should always reaffirm that we are trustworthy, professional, and can handle any curve balls they throw at us (and then some).

If our website, emails, and all other materials don’t embody clarity, professionalism, and contemporary taste, can our audience really entrust us with everything that occurs over their phone system?

2. Using the VirtualPBX website as an example, what are the types of design elements you prefer to make an end result that is visually appealing, sells well, and provides visitors with enough information to make an informed choice?

We’ve been through countless iterations of our pricing tables and we always have at least a handful of visually distinct versions serving different purposes across our website. As a business, we really pride ourselves on transparency. The telecommunications industry has been notorious for hidden fees and surprises in the fine print. We don’t want to be that way.

That said, it can be a lot of information to share and we’re up against potential decision-making fatigue and flashy offers from competitors. Among the elements used to counter this in our current tables, we’ve employed hover animation to draw visual focus and encourage action and toggles to show/hide information by need. Of course, the table styling and chosen hierarchy of information presented also play big roles. These tables should always stand out as the most appealing thing on the page.

3. Do you consider text to be part of visual design? In what way?

If you can see it, it’s part of the visual design – nothing gets a “pass.”

I’d also add though, that it’s not just the color, size, font, or the treatment of the text, but word choice, tone, brevity, and the actual content of the text, too. Ideally, each individual part of visual design principles works together to reaffirm your intent.

4. How do you use VirtualPBX brand colors (blue, white, gray) to convey a mood to your audience? There’s a lot of variation in the light and dark shades used throughout the website, for example. How are those shades used?

This question flashes me back to six years ago when I joined the company as Lead Graphic Designer and my first task was to define VirtualPBX’s brand style guidelines.

Blue has been in our logo for years, but otherwise color choice in visual materials was never firmly stated, so I had some room to redefine our style. In the end, blue became our primary color. From a color theory perspective, blue is calming and best employed in circumstances where you’re trying to explain or teach something. This fit perfectly with our intent to clearly explain our plans and services to a busy audience who may not find the prospect of comparing phone service providers calming.

Color theory also works as a visual design principle to assert that analogous color pairings (monochromatic, or side-by-side pairs on the color wheel) are calming – advancing our goal further. We use shades and variations of our primary blue and secondary black to draw attention in particular to calls to action, buttons, and links on our site.

5. In what ways do you use GIFs and videos to your advantage?

Not only are we interested in being transparent with our plans and pricing, we’re eager to share the actual experience customers have with us to our prospects.

GIFs and videos are a great way to share our Dash Business Phone System interface. Most updates in our phone system are made with a few clicks, so why tell someone about those clicks when you can record a screen and show them? It lets them imagine themselves in the driver’s seat, and we hope, lets them come to the conclusion, “Oh, this is easy, I can do this.” Outside of promotional purposes, we also find that GIFs and videos reduce confusion for our customers and are more desirable vessels for getting help for many than, say, a text-only help guide.

6. How do you make calls to action stand out from other text and visual elements?

The most notable contrast on a page should be reserved for the call to action. Always.

If a visitor notices anything on your page, it should be the thing that you want them to do. For us, this is usually a big blue button with text in all caps and some hover behavior.

Phone System Visual Design Principles

What Anderson has shared here applies, as we’ve established, with all our marketing materials. Importantly, it also extends into the design of our Unlimited Users Plans and Unlimited Minutes Plans, which we strive to make as visually distinct and accessible as everything else we present. Take a second today to schedule a Free Demo to see it in action.

TSELLC Case Study Features Our VirtualPBX 300 Plan

Posted on July 21, 2020   by Casey Houser

Since the launch of our Unlimited Users Plans in 2019, we’ve had a number of customers test the mettle of those 300-, 500-, and 1000-minute phone plans that were made for the needs of entrepreneurs, small businesses, and companies that don’t typically handle large call volumes.

One of those customers is TSELLC, which we have now featured in a case study that outlines the company’s journey from our legacy system to our new Unlimited Users Plans.

Each of those plans offers access to important business features like Call Forwarding and helps customers save money by allowing Unlimited Minutes Plans to focus on enterprise options like Call Reporting and ACD Queues.

TSELLC Uses VirtualPBX 300 to Its Advantage

Long-time customer TSELLC uses the VirtualPBX 300 plan to give itself a presence larger than its employee count may suggest.

At just five employees, including president and owner Art Wilkes, TSELLC has made a name for itself as a prominent software developer. It’s currently working on a line of coding wizards and an interface library, and completing all its work with a team that’s spread across the globe.

“We are an entirely virtual company,” Wilkes told VirtualPBX during its case study interview. He noted that his company uses its VirtualPBX Phone Plan as a supplement for its other electronic means of contact.

“Our customers mainly contact us through email and our website.” He was candid about the phone system’s position in the hierarchy of company contact. The phone plan plays a secondary role, but it does so with distinction by allowing TSELLC to have immediate use of an Automated Attendant and Voicemail for directing calls to the proper contacts at the company.

Adopting VirtualPBX, Upgrading to Dash

“We switched from another phone vendor when we moved to VirtualPBX,” Wilkes continued in his interview responses. VirtualPBX was able to provide TSELLC with a low cost and high quality of service in a plan that was developed back in 2015.

Since that time, VirtualPBX has grown in the number of core features it offers and the platform on which it runs its phone plans. All customers on the legacy system, vConsole, are now being upgraded to the new Dash platform.

TSELLC is one of those customers who recently made the upgrade. Wilkes’ costs for phone service in the past half decade have remained nearly the same, but there are dozens of features now available to all customers on any Dash plan they choose.

Dash is flexible in ways that the previous phone system wasn’t. It’s extensible and can easily offer customers upgrades to more powerful features, should they need them.

Read the TSELLC Case Study

For TSELLC, the status quo is working well. “We have done well with VirtualPBX, Wilkes remarked. And the members of the VirtualPBX team who have worked directly with TSELLC have described Wilkes and company as a pleasure to work with.

Writing the TSELLC case study has certainly moved smoothly. We’re excited to have the opportunity to work with companies that have a unique take on what phone system use can be. Wilkes and his compliment of remote employees show that even an introductory phone plan can be powerful enough to work on an international level. That’s the type of mettle we hope to always show.