VoIP QoS is Key for your Marketing

Digital tools like email and online advertising are quickly becoming essential to any marketing strategy. However the phone remains the most important marketing tool for the vast majority of businesses. Since PSTN based landlines have many limitations in an increasingly digital world, it’s no surprise that the adoption of VoIP systems has accelerated in recent years. While phones are the essential backbone for any organization, certain departments like sales and marketing depend on them to a greater extent than others.

The Relationship between VoIP and Marketing

Phones remain the number one method of communication for an organization. You use the phones to contact partners, customers, prospective clients etc. Some customers might contact you through other channels but most still prefer to use the phone. The importance of phones to marketing strategy cannot be underestimated.

But it’s not enough just to have phones that can handle all your voice communication requirements. The quality of audio on those calls is just as important. Your customers need the assurance that their calls will be answered without much waiting or delay. Once they reach the person they are calling for, they should be able to have a conversation without interruption and bad audio. As more organizations are getting used to their VoIP systems, many are realizing that quality matters.

What Is VoIP QoS?

QoS stands for quality of service in the world of VoIP. Few people outside the industry are aware of this term but QoS holds the key to your marketing, sales and any other department that relies on the phones. So what exactly does it do? Before we answer back, we need to look at some of the issues that can degrade your audio quality.

Jitter, latency and packet loss are a few problems that your network could face when handling VoIP. These issues mainly happen because phone calls are especially sensitive to delays. Voice calls are real-time applications unlike say email. For an email, it doesn’t matter if the various data packets are out of order or with the delay of a few seconds between each other. When you open the email, the text will be intact.

The same is not true for phone calls. Even a delay of one or two seconds will become noticeable when people are trying to talk to each other. If packets do not arrive in the correct order at the destination, you will miss certain words or hear echoes. As you can see, that is certainly not optimal when interacting with customers.

Setting the QoS on your network hardware will go a long way in solving these problems. When a call is made on the data network, it has to pass through various network equipment like routers, modems and switches. If all the hardware is configured to prioritize voice data above all else, quality will not suffer. In the absence of QoS, each of these points can become a bottleneck that slows down voice calls.

VoIP QoS and Marketing

Suppose you have just upgraded to a VoIP system from your old PSTN based PBX. You provided training for all your employees and everyone is happy to get started. All this preparation will come to naught if QoS is either ignored or configured incorrectly. When your marketing department or sales agents contact prospective customers, you really do not want quality problems. Missed or dropped calls, echoes or static on the line and other issues do not portray your company in a positive light.

Many businesses switch to hosted VoIP services to present a professional image to the outside world. However poor quality voice calls can harm that same image. QoS is not the only aspect you should be worried about. A robust network infrastructure, fast Internet and quality hardware (phones, headsets etc.) will go a long way to ensure that your marketing department gets crystal clear quality.

Quality Versus Features in VoIP

In the early days of VoIP adoption, companies were mainly concerned with the price. In fact price was the biggest reason why businesses which away from the PSTN. Slowly they started realizing that VoIP systems had many features that landlines did not or could not implement. But only now are they are realizing the importance of quality and security. Even today organizations tend to prefer VoIP services that offer more features than they could possibly need. Only after they begin using the service do they realize that they should’ve focused on quality as well.

This is perhaps the biggest argument in favor of free demos or trial periods. Most reputable VoIP vendors offer at least a 30 day free trial for prospective clients. This allows you to try out the system in real-world conditions and make sure it meets your requirements. If you find quality issues during the demo, you can quickly move on to some other service. As in every other aspect of business, quality matters!