The Importance Of Testing Your VoIP Lines

Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) allows you to make voice calls using an internet connection instead of a normal analog copper Telkom line, but despite the use of modern technology, VoIP lines still need to be tested regularly to ensure consistent connection and quality.

A faulty or sluggish VoIP line will compromise call quality and ultimately impact the communication between your business and your customers. The fact that the connection is lost will only become apparent when a caller complains that they are unable to get through on the line.

The knock-on effect is that your business will not deliver on its customer service goals and you will lose clients who are unwilling to spend time waiting in a queue to be answered or struggling to hear you properly on the line.

Imagine the frustration your customers could experience trying to concentrate on a conversation with speech break-up. This will certainly have a negative effect on first-time caller impressions and could lead to the loss of new business leads.

This is why you need to appreciate the importance of testing your VoIP lines and plan for testing on a regular basis to respond efficiently to such issues, as should have been done in the past with Telkom copper lines. A daily scheduled test will ensure that issues are picked up as soon as they arise.

Why do VoIP lines need to be tested often?

Simply put, VoIP lines need to be tested often because they can and will fail due to elements such as switches, routers, servers and cabling, which are all necessary but also points of failure, which can negatively affect call quality compared to analog lines.

You need to respond to such failures with urgency to mitigate reputational damage and loss of current and potential business as a result of VoIP line issues.

Your business must always be available for your customer calls and be ready to answer new business calls. This will allow you to protect your business reputation, make customer support readily accessible, convert new callers into clients and keep your customer base happy.

What can go wrong with VoIP lines?

VoIP might be a modern technology, but VoIP lines have many more points of failure compared to historical analog lines. Some of the common points of failure include the ISP, VoIP provider, firewall and routing changes, and equipment failure, making phone calls susceptible to noise interference and service interruptions.

VoIP phones do not automatically show that connections are lost. For this reason, your service provider should be monitoring and alerting you of trunk connection failures, such as choppy audio, echo concerns, network latency issues, bandwidth-related problems or jitter.

Your provider may not be testing and alerting you when such issues surface. Therefore, it is important to regularly test your VoIP lines to catch failures efficiently and address them as soon as they occur.

How to test your VoIP lines

Testing your VoIP lines involves looking into elements such as the call quality and connection speed while determining whether your network traffic is experiencing issues.

Ask your service provider to do a ping test using a diagnostic tool to determine where a performance issue is occurring within the network or phone system. There are also free online tools available to help you run a VoIP test. Such tools will check your download and upload speeds while analysing elements like latency, bandwidth, packet loss and jitter.

This test will allow you to identify issues effectively and give you a clear path to improving the performance of your VoIP line.

Discuss the VoIP test results with your ISP or VoIP provider to receive guidance on whether you need to upgrade your internet connection, have a technician address an equipment failure problem or change settings to prioritise the VoIP connection over other connections that are using your internet bandwidth.

VoIP technology is very customisable according to your needs, which is a major advantage, but remember to test your VoIP lines frequently to ensure your network’s readiness for high quality VoIP calling.

By outsourcing your receptionist or call answering requirements to Thetha Connect, you can rest assured that we will consistently monitor for connection and other VoIP problems and alert you the moment we detect an issue.