VOIP stands for Voice Over Internet Protocol, this product is typically used in businesses that have a lot of employees on the phone, and instead of using a typical telephone, they use the VOiP system. However, I'm wondering if those who use it hate it? Or on the other hand, do those who like it find it a great advantage?
Thank you David T for explaining all that to me. It's nice to have it in simple terms. From the sounds of it, it appears that information packets get lost causing callers to have to repeat themselves as they speak. This is a bad thing for me, so I think that I won't be using Voip until the technology improves.
t
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Even in a busy call center envirnment VoIP can provide the same call quality as a traditional landline and in the majority of situations at a much lower cost. However, the following conditions should be considered and met. A deficiency in any of the following can (and most likely will) cause issues.
1. Make sure the computer being used has plenty of RAM, Storage and processing speed to run the telephony software and all other applications that will need to run at the same time.
2. Use known and proven telephony software. Cisco Call Manager and Rockwell Convergence (now Aspect) work well together and are very reliable.
3. Use a high quality headset - that applies to landlines too. I myself prefer Plantronics.
4. BANDWIDTH, BANDWIDTH, BANDWIDTH!
Both Local Area Network and Internet Bandwidth.
Can your network handle the additional traffic. If there will be more than a few users then use a dedicated VoIP server.
When determining bandwidth needs the following should be calculated.
a. Amount of bandwidth needed for each extention.
b. Voicemail - when under it's heaviest use how many extentions are active at a time.
c. Do you utilize an IVR - How many concurrent calls does it process at peak times.
d. Call Queue - During peak periods do you have a large amount of calls in Queue? Remember each call in queue is utilizing bandwidth. If you don't have enough bandwidth for your call queue then call quality will drop across all extentions - usually echo and delay - which in turn will make your agents handling time go up and put even more calls in queue and so on...
Some downsides to using VoIP:
If your internet connection goes down and you don't have any traditional landline backup then NO PHONES.
If an application freezes that requires a computer restart then an active call on that computer must be ended or it will be lost.
VoIP offers a great deal of flexibility and cost savings for adding capacity. Both temporary and permanent.
It is partcularly cost effective if additional temporary capacity is needed as workstations can even be added at a different physical location without having phone lines installed.