Maintaining good communication with clients is one of the most important responsibilities of an attorney. As such, an East Coast law firm recently implemented a new hosted phone and softswitch system using ShoreTel (News - Alert) Sky's cloud-based VoIP solution, which has proven to be beneficial on many levels.
Not only do the employees at Bonner Kiernan Trebach & Crociata LLP now have access to phones with better features, but the solution has allowed for a happy and more productive workforce.
One feature offered by ShoreTel Sky's service includes a Web browser plug-in that enables attorneys to remain focused on what they are doing on their computer screen as they can go into their contacts and make a phone call right from the screen. Additionally, the plug-in can recognize anything on a webpage that resembles a phone number.
Other features of the cloud-based phone system include the ability to receive voicemail messages through both the phone and email messages with WAV (News - Alert) file attachments, improved record keeping for attorney-client communication, being able to capture billable hours more easily, and easy maintenance. The latter was especially relevant as the firm has nine different locations.
Dennis Wakeman, Bonner Kiernan's information systems manager, originally considered installing an in-house server to run a VoIP phone system for the firm which would have caused him to perform all data backups in each of the locations by himself. He would also have to be on call to fix any hardware issues.
With ShoreTel Sky, Wakeman doesn't have to worry about this since software upgrades, server maintenance and support questions are handled by ShoreTel.
“I’m very glad we went this route,” he said in a recent article in BizTech. “We could never begin to match the redundancy of data backup that ShoreTel Sky gives us.”
Prior to deploying the ShoreTel Sky VoIP system, Bonner Kiernan was using a PBX (News - Alert) system for over a decade. While the cost of the ShoreTel Sky solution isn't any more expensive then what the firm was already spending to run and provide support for the old PBX system, it is certainly easier to install and more effective in terms of what it offers for those the attorneys that use it.
Edited by Alisen Downey