Distributed to all customers on March 12, 2020

Clarity Voice is committed to providing reliable services and minimizing disruption to your operations.

As part of our standard operational practices, Clarity is actively monitoring the outbreak and spread of the COVID-19/ nCoV/ Coronavirus. Prior to the World Health Organization (WHO) announcing the Coronavirus as a pandemic and Michigan announcing a state of emergency, Clarity already had established home offices for every employee. This enables us to shelter-in-place while providing continued support and service to you and your offices should this measure be required. (We have outlined below some key telecommuting features your Clarity phone system offers, should you need to support remote work).

We are taking precautions across our national footprint, in line with local and national authorities, public health advice, and World Health Organization (WHO) guidelines. Additionally, we’ll continue to evaluate this very dynamic situation and will enhance our procedures, as necessary, to make sure we are acting in the best interests of our employees, customers, contractors and visitors.

Our contingency response plan not only follows the WHO’s phase alert levels but also includes precautions and potential actions under our Business Continuity Plan (detailed below). This includes measures to keep our personnel safe and healthy, and our customers informed of any potential impact to our business.

At Clarity, we consider ourselves an extension of your team – responsible for the critical communication technology you rely on to communicate with your customers. As such, we wanted to take a moment to share the actions we’re taking to protect your communication service, our personnel, and our facilities.

What precautions does Clarity currently have in place?

We are actively monitoring the local health situation and governmental guidance at our corporate offices in Southfield Michigan and our multiple US data centers. We have a Business Continuity Plan in place to enact, by site, in coordination with vendors where applicable. The current precautions we have put in place do not affect our capability to deliver services to you or our ability to access equipment.

If the COVID-19/ nCoV/ Coronavirus outbreak escalates to a level where it’s wise or required to restrict access to one or more of our sites, we already have established home offices with high-speed internet connections for every employee at Clarity. This enables us to shelter-in-place while providing continued support and service to you and your offices. We have also have secure full-system access that supports remote working conditions. Learn more about our system security at: Rest Assured with Clarity’s End-to-End Security.

We are committed to proactively keeping you informed and will also be offering additional video training on the tools your Clarity Communication Portal offers. This enables all our Business Essential Plan users to also deploy home office setups for their staff.

Here are the current protocols we have in place:

  • Asking our personnel that experience the first symptoms of a cold/flu to stay home. We are also asking our contractors, customers, and visitors to make similar choices.
  • Encouraging all individuals on-site to follow the advice of the CDC and WHO:
    • Wash your hands when you arrive or use restrooms.
    • Wash your hands often, with soap, for at least 20 seconds.
    • Cough and sneeze in a disposable tissue, throw it away immediately, or cough or sneeze in the inside of your elbow if you don’t have a tissue at hand.
    • Use disinfection gel regularly, as our office supplies remain available.
    • Consider limiting in-person meetings or visits to data center facilities for business-critical purposes only.
    • We recommend employees check with our business contacts before planning to visit or travel.

Access to our Data Centers:

  • None of our personnel who have traveled in the last 2 weeks internationally are permitted to access our data center facilities.
  • Personnel who have been in close contact with anyone who tested positive for COVID-19 or who have been asked to self-quarantine are not permitted to access our data centers. By close contact, we mean spending 15-minutes or more with the person in the last 14-days or living in the same household.
  • We have established secure virtual access systems for ongoing system and server maintenance to err on the side of caution.

Travel for Clarity Employees:

We are advising all Clarity employees to follow travel advisories and any quarantine guidelines put in place by applicable government agencies. We have also asked employees to consider alternatives to traveling to areas experiencing high outbreak activity. For example, by delaying travel to these areas if possible or using Clarity’s collaboration tools to talk, text, chat or meet “virtually.” We have implemented hygiene precautions in our corporate headquarters and data centers, supplying employees with guidelines to follow to reduce their chance of exposure to the virus. We’ll continue to inform our employees and point them to the CDC and WHO resources as we monitor the situation.

Clarity’s Business Continuity Plan (BCP) & COVID-19 Response Plan:

We continue to closely monitor the geographies we operate in. We will activate protocols based on our Business Continuity Plan’s (BCP) highest alert level for a site or region at heightened risk or affected by COVID-19. Clarity determines risk based on the guidance and alert levels communicated by the World Health Organization (WHO) and the United States Center for Disease Control (CDC).

Based on our BCP, if warranted, we will put the “best practices” below in place to make sure our business operations continue to operate normally:

  • “Split staffing” of front line employees to minimize the risk of exposure and spreading the infection to opposite teams or shifts.
  • “Remote working” for office employees to mitigate the risk of community spread.
  • Global Network Operations Center(s) (GNOC) monitoring, Building Management System (BMS)/network services, Virtual Private Network (VPN) and remote/redundant monitoring, as-needed.
  • Redundant and remote (as-needed) monitoring of physical security and surveillance systems.
  • On-site incident response planning, in order for business operations to stay normal if human intervention is required to test or repair systems.
  • Communicating with customers, stakeholders, and employees of an “activated” pandemic BCP response.
  • Maintaining “situational awareness” to make sure any measures we take are consistent with current guidance from governmental and regulatory authorities.

How will we communicate changes to our customers, vendors, and partners?

Commitment to our customers is one of our core commitments. We are focused on providing you with reliable service and stand ready to act, with additional measures as required, to help safeguard our collective best interests.

We will continue to monitor the situation and our leadership will immediately communicate changes to our response to COVID-19 through email to your account’s assigned point of contact(s). We will note changes publicly on Clarity’s System Status website page.

How can you use your Clarity Communication System to work remotely?

There are a host of tools you can use to support remote work without losing managerial monitoring and insights. Here is a 5-minute video overview of the five tools any organization could use to implement immediately to help their teams not lose traction should they need to telecommute. We also have micro how-to videos designed to show you how to take advantage of individual functions you’ll also want to use.

In closing, thank you for being a Clarity customer. We appreciate your business and value your input. If you have any questions or suggestions about our plans and response, please feel free to contact me directly. Meanwhile, our support team stands ready to help if you need us. 800.676.3995 |Monday-Friday 8am – 9pm EST |Emergency Support: 24 Hours

Yours Sincerely,

Melissa Fisher
Chief Operating Officer, Clarity Voice