BIZ|Tech Blog

We have seen a surge of interest of late in customers wishing to record phone calls.  It appears that their motivation is primarily ensuring that their personnel provide good customer service.  This is much easier technologically than it used to be, especially for those using IP phones.

One generic solution that will work with any phone involves a device that connects between the phone and the receiver.  Regardless of the type of phone, the audio level between the receiver and phone is pretty standard.  As such, you can intercept and record the audio stream there with analog, digital, and IP phones.  The more efficient versions connect to and work with software on a PC, such as Konexx’s USB Phone 2 PC.  You can do the same thing with an external recording device such as Sys-link’s PDR3 digital recorder.  The problem with this overall approach however is that to some degree, it is dependant on the phone user’s cooperation.  They can disable the recording at any point.

The next approach, used only with analog lines, captures the recording at the incoming line.  Products such as the XTR Analog-04 can record all calls on 4 analog lines to a central PC.  This approach is affordable, and takes the control out of the hands of the person being recorded.  The down side is that all calls get recorded, even those of the CEO, if he/she happens to use one of those lines.

You can get proprietary solutions that work with a specific type of phone system, but I tend to steer people away from these solutions.  They lock you in to a single phone system, and make replacing it more difficult.

The use of IP phones makes the process of call recording a good bit easier.  A device connected to the network can capture and store all SIP traffic, regardless of where it originates on the network.  The only rub is that network switches are designed only to forward network traffic to the necessary ports, so using such technology may require some network modifications.  Products such as CallRex handle this well, although they are usually not inexpensive.

Finally, there are solutions integrated directly into software-based phone systems such as 3CX.  Since the call capture is done in software on the machine where all calls are routed, there is little or no incremental cost, and no network issues.  If you are serious about flexible recording, you should seriously consider a software-based phone system.

Remember that there are regulations about when calls can be recording, and any warnings that are required, which vary from state to state.  Before embarking on call recording, make sure you understand your rights and responsibilities.

The title may seem like a bit of a contradiction, but it is true, at least in my case.  The story began a month or so ago.  I was continuing to pay AT&T more money each month than I case to admit for home phone service I almost never used (except for ignoring telemarketing calls).  Since I have cable Internet rather than DSL, I did not need the line for that purpose.  After some hesitation, I pulled the plug.

Some time after cancelling my service, I had one of those nightmares that makes you wake up in a cold sweat.  I dreamed quite vividly that I had an intruder in my house, and had to fumble around for my cell phone to call 911.  A few days after, I was doing some home improvement work in my kitchen.  Just for grins, I picked up the recreiver on the old wall phone still hanging there.  To my surprise, I had dial tone.  I initially thought they had just not gotten around to disconnecting it (Comcast left my extended cable up for years after I went to local only service).  I dialed my cell phone as a test.  After a few rings, I got a recording telling me that my line could be used to dial 911, or to call one number at AT&T and reinstate my service.

I have not yet figured out if this is an AT&T marketing ploy (in which case, it is a good one), or something mandated by the Public Service Commission that we pay for with our tax dollars, but I have not had my nightmare again since I discovered I could still dial 911.

In the “olden days” of analog lines and POTS phones, power failures were not an issue.  The power necessary for the phones to work was provided over the line using a massive battery plant. 

Alas, it is a brave new world, and maintaining phone service after the loss of power is a challenging issue.  Even if you use only analog lines without a phone system, you probably still use phones that require power.  Your lines will still work, but you won’t have a phone to use them with.  Add to the mix phone systems and VoIP, and the problem grows exponentially.  The purpose of this post is to help you to think through the issues and how you will deal with them. 

1. Keep at least one analog line, even if you are using VoIP or a T-1.  Keep a pots phone around as well.  You can also use phones requiring power by plugging them into a UPS.
2.  Some legacy phone systems, particularly the older ones, have a power fail backup which routes calls automatically to POTS phones in the event of a power failure.  If you have this option, test it and use it. 
3. Use a server-class UPS for your phone system, and only share it with necessary phone components. 
4. If you have analog lines going into a phone system, you can connect a line in parallel to a POTS phone using a standard line splitter.  This will allow that phone to ring if the system goes down. 
5. If you use VoIP service, order the disaster recovery service they offer, which will redirect calls in the event of a failure.  If your provider does not offer it, switch providers. 
6. If you have a PC-based phone system, you can set most PCs via the BIOS to restart after power is restored.  This has a downside however, because if the power starts bouncing up and down, you can corrupt or damage your system.  Personally, I would rather wait and restart it intentionally, but if your system is critical after hours, this is an option. 
7. Where possible, use IP phones with Power over Ethernet, and have the switch that provides power connected to a UPS.  This keeps all phones up, and is easier overall to manage. 
8. Whatever approaches you choose, test them periodically.  Turn your power off intentionally, and confirm that your plan works. 

Phone systems and VoIP certainly muddy the waters of dealing with a power outage, but if you plan ahead, you can be protected.

I have consistently said that while I am not a fan of hosted PBX, it can make sense for some businesses.  If you do choose to go this direction however, it is critical that you find a provider that can do it well.

We visited a customer last week who was having major phone issues.  They complained that they had never been able to transfer a call, that their automated attendant was impossible to navigate, and that their service was down frequently.  They had a major event coming up, and people could not reach them to sign up.  From the description, I assumed they were using a hosted solution.

When I got to their office, the customer handed me a  notebook that she said was instructions for their phone system.  As I paged through it, I was struck by how amateurish the documentation was.  It looked like someone had typed it up in their spare time.  As I read further, I found that the provider was a company I had never heard of.

It is quite easy these days to get into the hosted PBX business.  All you need is a PC-based PBX software running on a server in one of the many inexpensive co-location facilities around the country, and Voice over IP service provided by one of the companies that will private label such service.  The investment is minimal.  With these facilities and some hastily-prepared documentation, you can have your own phone company.

Sadly, owning a phone company and keeping the technology up and running are two different things.  People expect their service to work 24 hours a day, and they want you to be ther to fix it no matter when it goes down.  Most small phone company providers are not equipped to do this.

The bottom line is that if you plan to use hosted PBX service, make sure you choose your vendor with care.  Or better yet, get an affordable PBX, and keep the reliability under you own control.

I always try to learn from my mistakes.  Given that one of the prime focuses of our company is educating customers, I try to let them learn from my mistakes as well.  That can be a bit embarrassing at times.

Tuesday evening, I was relaxing a bit after returning from the gym.  My phone rang, and it was the alarm company reporting a burglary alarm at the office.  I left for the office pretty quickly, but assumed it was the cleaning people accidentally setting it off.  It looked like a false alarm at first, but as I looked around, I discovered that the inside door had been forced open, and the cash drawer stolen.  Not a big deal in terms of monetary value, but quite annoying.  It appears to be someone associated with the office complex, since getting to the side door requires a key to the a public hall in the building.

As the officer was completing his report, he asked about any video surveillance.  I glanced around, and remembered that we had installed a camera in the showroom so we could see who was coming it when we were not out there.  Unfortunately, we had never bothered to setup recording of the images.  Given the inside nature of the theft, were video available, the thief would probably be behind bars now.

The moral of the story is that if you are going to pay for technology, use it to its full value, and don’t let some of all of its features sit on the shelf.  That is a bit like having a deadbolt lock on your door, and never locking it.

According to industry statistics, 31% of businesses use some form of Voice over (VoIP) IP service today.  While the available statistics are not too specific, I suspect that this percentage represents mostly larger companies.  The same study indicates that by 2013, a total f 74% of businesses will use some form of VoIP.  This number is large enough to include many small and medium businesses.

In my experience, concern about call quality often stops smaller businesses from moving to VoIP.  That being said, the great potential savings involved, and the growing acceptance of VoIP for home phone service is winning them over.  In many cases however, once a smaller business decides to consider VoIP, they run into a roadblock - their legacy phone system.

To be honest, I would like to sell everyone with a legacy system who wants to deploy VoIP a new system.  It would mean better profit for me, and better satisfaction and superior call handling for them.  That being said, it is possible and practical to deploy VoIP with a legacy phone system.  This approach does not require ANY changes to the legacy phone system.

With the growing acceptance of VoIP, a number of manufacturers have begun  to produce analog to VoIP gateways.  These devices have a network connection and an analog line port.  The network connection is connected to your network, and the analog port to a phone line on your existing phone system.  The gateway is then programmed to communicate with a VoIP provider.

When a VoIP call arrives, your gateway converts it from VoIP to analog, and connects it to your phone system.  As far as the phone system can tell, it is an analog line.  Using this approach, you can mix and match analog and VoIP service to increase your capacity and minimize your costs.

We did an installation last week of a Patton 4112, 2-port analog gateway.  It was easy to configure, and resulted in excellent call quality.

In summary, if you want to get your feet wet with VoIP, but you also want to preserve your legacy phone system investment for as long as possible, consider a gateway.

I have been doing bookkeeping for many years for churches, non-profit organizations, and small businesses.  Unlike many people today whose knowledge of accounting extends only to the capabilities of Quick Books, I learned the hard way, with double-entry accounting using green ledger paper.  It might surprise you to learn therefore that I don’t do the bookkeeping for my company.  I can’t afford myself.

Here are the numbers:  My time bills out at a minimum of $85/hour, and most weeks, I don’t have trouble filling it.  When I do have gaps, my focus is on building the business, which pays dividends down the road.  My very competent accountant charges me $25/hours for his work, and since he is far more experienced than I, it probably takes him half the time it would take me.   Given the above, it is saving me at least $60/hour to use him instead of doing it myself.

As another example, we provide IT services for various law firms.  I suspect they bill $150/hour at a minimum.  If they pay us to handle their IT rather than trying to do it themselves, they save conservatively $65/hour.

The bottom line is that if you think you are saving money by handling routine tasks such as IT yourself, you may well be wrong.  This is the essence of the new outsourcing.

In our challenged economy, small businesses are constantly looking for ways to reduce their costs.  Many are combining offices, or renting spare offices to individuals.  Having multiple businesses in a single office can cause phone wars, with competition for phone lines, lack of privacy, and the inability to properly apportion costs.

In the past, a tenant in an existing office could just be another extension on an existing phone system, which caused many of the aforementioned issues, or could have the local carrier install one or more lines just for them, which was expensive.  We worked with one such customer last year, who had multiple companies in a single space, each with their own individual phone lines, resulting in very complicated cabling.

Voice over IP (VoIP) can be of great benefit in solving tenant issues.  Since VoIP lines are virtual, they do not involve the expense of the installation of a physical line.  A single number can scale to handle multiple incoming calls, and mutiple numbers can be used to direct calls without having the expense of multiple lines.

We had this situation occur today with one of our TalkSwitch customers.  This company had sublet a single office to an individual, and had let him use their existing phone number and line capacity.  This arrangement was causing difficulty for both sides.  To solve the problem, we opened a new nexVortex account for the individual, had a new number assigned to him, and set the TalkSwitch to route calls to that number to his phone only, and to only use his number for his outgoing calls.  We completed this within a few hours, resulting in two very happy customers.

If no VoIP-capable phone system exists, an inexpensive VoIP gateway could be used, which would allow an analog phone to be used with VoIP service.