Modernizing Communication for Competitive Advantage and Client Trust

Hi, I'm Steve Forham, channel chief and head of marketing here at Cypio. I want to thank you for joining uh our second annual fleet week. We've got a great week of sessions set up.

This morning's keynote was really dynamite. You heard from Cisco, Zoom, and WebEx about the um and uh Microsoft, sorry, about the power that you can get by adding communications to their collaboration platforms. This session, modernizing communications for competitive advantage and client trust is all focused on how legal firms can harness these platforms to increase client satisfaction, increase billables, and overall decrease the costs in the firm.

You know, when we look at today's communications environment and think about how you're servicing your clients, how you're empowering your staff to collaborate internally, one thing is really crystal clear. What worked in 2005 is dramatically different than what's needed in 2025. You know, 10 years has been a dramatic shift uh especially over the last five since the pandemic. And the challenge that a lot of firms are wrestling with now, you know, overnight having to work from the safety of our homes during the pandemic. Now we're all getting back into our offices or working in a hybrid environment. The solutions that we've adopted over the past 5 years have largely been able to keep up with that. You know, you you adopted a platform like Zoom during the pandemic to support video meetings. Maybe you adopted Teams or you were using Cisco previously, so you adopted WebEx. And as you have people working in the office, working remote, working uh in a hybrid type environment where they're on the go, these tools are largely morphing into what you need to support today's modern workforce, except for that legacy phone system, which firms depend on. That's the lifeblood for communicating with your clients. And uh nearly 49% of law firms that were surveyed still rely on traditional office-based telephones as their primary communications tool. And as we found out in 2020, these are really challenging tools to leverage in a more flexible work environment. You know, remote hybrid tool uh workforces struggle with a tool that is anchored to a desk. It doesn't really support transition outside the office.

Meanwhile, client expectations have gone up because just as we were able to work remote, so were the clients and they know the tools that are out there, they know the AI capabilities that are available. And they're increasingly expecting this the firms and services that they work with to be able to service them in a more modern, a more flexible, and frankly a more responsive fashion. So, you know, when when firms are looking at how do I better enhance communications to serve my clients, there's friction everywhere that you got to try and get out of the system, you know, the the communications infrastructures are fragmented. Um, attorneys struggle to move seamlessly from their office communic office devices to devices on the go. Um, you know, your your office phone and your cell phone typically will have two different phone numbers. When you give your cell phone number to a client, they never call your office phone. And on one hand that might be okay, but on the other hand it leads to lost billables. It leads to challenges around the device itself. You know, if you talk on your phone for too long, it gets hot as lava. That's a challenge. Battery life when you're on the go. Um firms are wrestling with the costs that seem to keep spiraling faster than inflation on a price of eggs because maintaining that legacy infrastructure carries with it a lot of hard and soft dollar costs. um you know the hard dollar costs of this thing constantly asking for more and more investment to stay up to date. Um the talent sets that are required to keep these systems up and running even though they have less and less and less return as far as new features and capabilities is becoming even more challenging. Um, you know a lot of those skill sets are starting to leave the workforce and the you know let's face it it's not like uh college graduates are getting trained in the vaia Cisco or myel phone system. So you know that talent set is becoming more and more scarce and frankly as a result more and more expensive. Uh another thing that's popping onto radar for firms is compliance. You know these legacy systems typically are not easy if they are e if it's even possible to integrate with compliance platforms and billing platforms. So not only are you missing um costs and billables, you're also potentially leaving the firm vulnerable from a discovery perspective and from a a compliance perspective. But ultimately it really drives down to hard dollar costs. The costs to operate and to maintain these on premise systems especially is becoming unwieldly.

But there's an answer. You know, there's a report that shows if you migrate your legacy on premise system, in this case the report was to Microsoft Teams phone, you're going to recognize tremendous hard dollar cost savings. Your total cost of ownership will go through the floor over four0% reduction in total cost of ownership. You're going to see an ROI in under six months. and the ROI return is going to be dramatic. Uh there's a quote in here from the report. You can download the report. The source uh is it's available on our website. You can click uh on that link and download it. We'll make it available to uh attendees as well. But the quote from the report that really just captured me was we were looking an inter in incremental cost reduction of per user of almost 40% or about $20 per user per month. Do the math. How many users are in your firm? If you could save up to $20 per user per month, what kind of a dent does that uh drive into your telecom costs? All by simply enabling the phone system you've already bought. You just don't know it yet.

And that's the real secret that firms are unlocking is you've already bought your next communication system. If you're using Microsoft Teams, Microsoft Teams phone is there for you. You just got to turn it on. If you're using Zoom, Zoom phone built into the platform. You just got to turn it on. And if you prefer Cisco and you've got WebEx, Webex calling is there. You just need to turn it on.

So, as firms are looking at how to better serve their clients and how to better serve the infrastructure uh of employees and staff wherever they happen to be, no matter what device happens to be there, no matter where they happen to uh connect, what network, wired, wireless, cellular, how do we better serve that? And the very first challenge is the complexity. You know over years we've adopted this mindset in the industry of treating the symptoms instead of treating the core problem and that is the system itself. Uh you know firms have adopted and created this Frankenstein's monster of bolted together solutions that solve problems tactically. You know uh we we need to be able to text our clients so we start using you know our cell phones or we start finding a standalone service. We need to still support fax because that's out there. Well, we go get a standalone service. We need to do this. We need to do that. And we've built this Frankenstein's monster of standalone services that aren't integrated that increase the overhead on the firm's employees, staff, and attorneys. And it ultimately leads to compliance gaps and potentially lost billables, which is obviously I don't need to tell you quite a big problem. So the communication stack itself and the way it's been built over time with uh a best of breed mindset with a tactical approach towards problem solving has led to this this house of cards infrastructure that is ready to blow over and needs a modernization update.

You know users spend so much time flipping through different apps to get things done. A lot of times billables get lost because it's hard to track as you move from app to app because these things have a lack of centralization. It's not like everything comes back to a hub uh from a spoke and that hub is connected into your billing infrastructure, your compliance infrastructure. Everything is just a standalone island with very few if any bridges between. The human has become the integration point. Um, you know, look at your phone. How many messaging apps do you have in a folder? um, you're the integration point between the people that use those different tools. How many phone apps, how many uh meeting apps do you have that becomes a challenge not just for the end user on the overhead but also from your IT staff. Uh many times you have you know an understaffed department that's managing your in internal infrastructure. Maybe you're using outsourcers which increases the cost because now managing this this hodgepodge of of lightly integrated if at all tools becomes serious overhead both you know again for your internal staff but also if you're using outsource services that's what's running the billup and a lot of times when we talk to attorneys one of the biggest questions is why can't my phone number go with me or I stop using my desk phone and I start using my cell phone exclusively because no matter where I am, my cell phone will be with me. But my desk phone is really where I want my clients going through because I've got coverage with my admin. I've created, you know, kind of an orchestrated call flow to make sure that it's always being answered uh within a reasonable time frame. My voicemail on my corporate system has so much more capability than my cell phone voicemail. Um, but the challenge is these are separated systems. They're not tightly integrated. Um, you know, the app-based approach of the past creates its own set of challenges because you got to remember to use the app when you make that outbound call. Otherwise, it's not going over managed infrastructure.

So, having the ability to have that one number reach just like you have one email address that synchronizes across all of the devices you use. It doesn't matter whether you use an iPad, uh, a cell phone, a computer, even a logging into a web browser in a a guest computer at a hotel. You have one email address where your clients can reach you, but your voice services has always been fragmented. You've got your office landline, your mobile phone, maybe you give clients a a a landline number in your home office. So bringing these things into sync not only makes it easier for your uh attorneys and the clients to reach them, but it also helps you with compliance and billables because now with that tightly integrated centralized service, you're not missing anything whether it's a compliance issue for discoverability or whether it's a a billable issue for you know running these things. It gives you the ability to ensure that nothing gets missed and nothing slips through the cracks.

But then when you factor in not just the voice aspect but then the digital communications aspect, you know, are you communicating with your clients via text? Are you communicating with your clients via dis uh personal pro public services like Signal and WhatsApp where you know you potentially have dis uh dissolvable messages that creates compliance issues, creates chain of custody problems. Having the ability to serve that need to be able to text back and forth to be able to use WhatsApp with your clients but do it in a way that's supported by the team by the the firm and to do it in a way that is fully captured by compliance is really critical.

But ultimately the the biggest benefit is of centralizing and consolidating these services is a cost one. It keeps coming back to cost. Finding the talent sets to manage this legacy infrastructure is becoming harder and harder and harder which leads to outsourcing more and more and more. And because these things are such a bear to keep, you know, all of the trains on the track, so to speak, that increases your managed services provider bill because now they have to go out and find those talent sets. They have to spend more time managing all of this disparit infrastructure and that all hits the firm in a bill as far as overhead. You know, legal work is complicated. It can be complex, but your communications infrastructure shouldn't be.

And what we've done at Cypio is we've made it easy. We've made it fast to get going. We've made it easy to manage as you're running. And we've made it reliable forever. We put calling, texting, faxing, WhatsApp, contact center, and more directly into the collaboration platform you're already using. Whether you're using Teams, Zoom, or WebEx, we want to just make that work better. Instead of trying to move your firm to a different platform and retach everybody how to do things, all you have to do is take the platform you're already using and make it work better.

We make it fast to start. Our quoting system is like shopping on Amazon. You just choose how many users you have, which bundles you'd like, and within minutes, those numbers are active in your collaboration platform. Everything's fully automated in the cloud. We're built in Microsoft Azure, which means I can turn on services instantly because as I need to add capacity, Microsoft is there for me. And our platform has full automation. So those numbers uh for new service can be pushed directly up into your platform for assignment. So we're fast to start. We can get you running in minutes. We're reliable, but we're also um dependable. We can give you numbers no matter where you are with the simplicity of one number, I'm sorry, one hand to shake, one bill to pay service. No matter where you may have a remote office or a remote user around the planet, chances are we can service them. Our global network supports over 80 countries uh so we can get you service where you need it. We're deployed in Microsoft Azure uh around the world so we can cover you as your users um expand into new territories or as you potentially add new clients in new territories without adding users in those spaces. We can give you numbers in remote offices.

The system is easy to manage. So it's going to cut down on your managed services bills. It's going to put the um power back in your internal IT staff's hands. Uh so our intuitive dashboard gives you a one-stop shop to manage all of your users uh all of the services to add services as needed and to also manage phone numbers that aren't a part of the Cypio uh plan. So, if you've got standalone phone numbers like cell phone numbers, uh fax numbers that are outside the system, uh emergency services, emergency uh fire alarm panels and such, you can add all of those to this platform for one place to manage all of your telephone inventory. So, this way you can keep a razor sharp eye on your telecom costs. And our platform, as I mentioned earlier, is Azure native, which means we're reliable forever. This is carriergra stuff. uh we're deployed in nine Azure regions around the world. Within each region, we're deployed in an HA model, so everything's fully duplicated. And within each region, we can fail over between three zones. This means we can give you a 59 contractual SLA. That means less than five minutes of out uh outage time per year or we cut you a check. And this is a reliable service that firms depend on to communicate with clients in a 24 by7 environment. We support hundreds of thousands of users on this platform around the world.

We also further give you flexibility in how you consume our services. So if your firm is ready to move from your premise legacy phone system all the way to Teams, Zoom or WebEx, Cypio Connect is there for you. That's what you need to move over. But if your firm isn't quite ready yet, maybe you're under contract with that legacy phone system, maybe you've got other priorities and you're not quite ready to, you know, cut the cord on the on the prem phone system, but you want to add more capabilities. You want to add the ability to communicate with clients via text or maybe you want to add EAC. Uh, Cypio Bridge is your answer. So, Cypio Bridge delivers voice services to your premise-based phone system while giving you the ability to add additional capabilities to users, whether they're using Teams, Zoom, or WebEx.

And finally, we make it easy. The way that we make it easy first is with easy to understand plans. So, Cypio plans and these are I'm giving you a sneak peek uh if you're watching this live. We're announcing these on Wednesday, but to give you a sneak peek, our Cypio light plan includes a calling plan with uh shared minutes as well as a shared text messaging plan for the firm. So, it gives you a limited number of text messages to share among uh your users in the firm to communicate via voice or via digital. For a couple dollars more, Cypio Plus upgrades your text messaging capability to unlimited. So, if you have a a lot of users that like to text back and forth with clients or if you want to set up a shared mailbox uh where you have multiple users monitoring the inbox, upgrade to uh Cypio Plus. You'll get that unlimited text messaging capability for the user. And then we have Cypio Pro. Uh Cypio Pro gives you the calling and the texting as well as some analytics for your call cues. So, if you have an inbound call queue from your main phone number and you'd like to see how many people are calling, when they're calling, uh real-time statistics like how many people are currently waiting, uh how many people are on online uh answering calls, that's embedded into this service as well, including Cypio Care. CPIO Care is our managed services offering, so you don't have to worry about your phone system ever again. Uh whenever you need any changes, Cypio Care has you covered. So, if you need to change a call queue, a call flow for an attorney uh who's going on vacation and needs calls to route differently or we're switching admins around, Cypio Care has you covered. That's included uh with Pro, it's add available as an additional fee for Light and Plus. but further to deliver further flexibility. If you want to really fine-tune exactly what users have and what services they don't need and not add those, our library is fully modular, so you can pick and choose on a user-by-user basis who gets what services. So if you want to use the Cypio plans for the bulk of your users, but then you want to pick and choose exactly what people need, our library is modular with no preconditions.

So, Cypio Connect again for those uh firms that are ready to move all the way to Microsoft Teams, Zoom or WebEx and get rid of that legacy phone system. Cypio Bridge for those uh firms that need to operate in a hybrid model, keeping voice on premise but adding additional capabilities to Team Zoomer or WebEx. And then we've got additional digital communication services underneath. So, uh, Cypio text messaging by clerk chat gives your users the ability to send and receive text messages, uh, SMS and MMS, multimedia messages, as well as RCS, real-time messages. Those green bubbles, now you can see the red messages. Now you can do a variety of other things. Uh, we support WhatsApp for business, and we're going to be adding uh, Apple messages for business. So, you'll be able to communicate with your clients on their communication services in a way that is fully compliant with um logging, capture, discovery, and more. And it's all embedded into Teams, Zoom, or WebEx. So, you don't have to have additional apps installed on the client on your uh staff and attorneys phones. CPIOcx. So, I mentioned in the pro tier, we include analytics, but what if you want to record all of your calls for full compliance? We got you covered. Cypio recording, uh, even we can do CPIO recording plus AI if you want to do some sentiment analysis, keyword spotting, and such. Uh if you have a full-blown customer engagement center, a client engagement center where you've got agents who are handling customer calls and quantity, or you want to engage with clients on social and other channels, our partners at Solgari can get you up and running in hours with a fully AI empowered pre-integrated contact center solution for Microsoft Teams. And then we've got other services like Cypio Mobile. So, as your attorneys are on the go and they're using their cell phones, their cell phone is their business phone. And when they're at their desk and they're using Teams phone, they don't have to worry about having a different phone number. Same number, all devices, no app required. You just make the phone call like you do on team on your cell phone. and it's using your business communications line, which means compliance, billing system integrations, recording, all of those things happen even if you're using your cell phone without using an app. So, it really gives you the flexibility to fine-tune and to pick and choose exactly what services each user in your firm needs.

Now, I'd like to finalize and finish this presentation by sharing with you a case study. So Freedberg PC is a firm in the greater Maryland area serving clients all over the planet. Uh and we moved them over almost instantly because they had a disaster. Their premisebased phone system failed within minutes. We had migrated and set them up with new service on the Cypio platform. We set them up with temporary phone numbers. We forwarded their existing numbers to this environment and they were using Microsoft Teams which meant the uplift was almost instant. You know, this is a frantic time. All of a sudden, I can't talk to my clients because the phone system has failed. But because they were already using Microsoft Teams, they didn't have to go around and teach people how to use this new system. All they did was say, "Look in Microsoft Teams. You'll see a dial pad now. You can call your clients there." and it just worked. So, the adoption went through the roof like a rocket launching off of uh the the pad down in Florida. So, speed was huge. Client relations was a major thing. The ability to now take their communications wherever they happen to be, whether they're using their computer uh in the office or at home or whether they're using their cell phone on the go, they have the ability to stay connected with their clients even when they're dealing with clients off of their normal business hours. uh as those clients are working around the world in time zone differentials. We've got more details about this case study on our website cypio.ioblog. Uh so definitely check that out. So this way you can take a look and see what u Jeremy found uh by migrating to Cypio and what you could potentially do with your firm by adopting this powerful service.

This has been modernizing communications for competitive advantage and client trust in legal. Uh if you have any questions, feel free to visit our website cypio.io or reach out to your business partner or reach out to your Cypio account manager for more details.