A VoIP service is only as good as its weakest quality metric. That’s why investing in high-quality VoIP testing tools to analyze call quality is crucial for businesses to stay ahead of potential problems and maintain a positive communication experience for customers.
But what VoIP testing tools are out there, and what metrics do they analyze? Before we can answer those questions, however, we should first clear up…
What Is VoIP?
VoIP, or voice over internet protocol, is a technology that converts voice into digital data packets so that they can be transmitted over the internet or a private network.
The purpose of VoIP is to allow voice communications to be transmitted over the web rather than a traditional phone line, otherwise known as a PSTN, or Public Switched Telephone Network.In a nutshell, VoIP converts your voice into digital signals, which are then converted into digital packets and sent to the receiver over the internet or network, and within milliseconds, are reassembled and converted back into audio for the person on the other end to hear.
VoIP Testing Tools
#1: Occam’s iTest Voice
Occam’s Outbound Voice Testing is part of the Razor platform, which offers a full suite of contact center solutions. Razor’s Outbound Voice Testing helps businesses stay ahead of potential call issues and maintain smooth communications.
The tool tests the most important call metrics, such as:
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- Call quality mean opinion score (MOS)
- Real-time transport protocol (RTP) statistics
- Post dial delay (PDD)
- CLI/ANI presentation
- Fraud detection
With a special focus on telecom fraud detection, Razor’s Outbound Voice Testing is the most comprehensive testing tool on the market. Businesses looking for comprehensive call monitoring can take advantage of its extensive features, such as:
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- Voice quality testing
- Fraud detection and prevention
- Global reach and reliability
- Real-time measurements and insights
- Customizable automated testing
- CLI/ANI presentation accuracy
- Extensive support and documentation
#2: RingCentral
#3: Fusion Connect
#4: Nextiva VoIP Speed Test
Why Do You Need a Carrier Class Voip Testing Tool?
It goes without saying that the easiest way to avoid unpleasant call interactions due to VoIP issues or poor voice quality is to test early and monitor always.
Impact of a Poor VoIP Connection
The agent has finally managed to lower the customer’s anxiety and is in the middle of reassuring them when their voice starts to sound robotic. Now, the customer can only hear every other word. The agent’s voice becomes so unintelligible that, in a huff, the customer hangs up, more annoyed than they were at the start of the call.
And that’s just one call with one agent and one customer. Multiply that by however many VoIP quality issues the agents have throughout the day, and suddenly, your brand’s reputation is on the line.
What Should A VoIP Test Check?
Here’s what a good-quality VoIP test should check:
Jitter
Measured in milliseconds, jitter is the delay or variation in latency between individual data packets traversing network connections. The longer the delay, the more likely the call will encounter unnatural speech and interruptions. If jitter is high, it’s likely that the conversation will be choppy, laggy, and unpleasant for both callers and receivers.
Latency or Ping Time
Also referred to as call lag, latency is when there’s a delay between the speaker speaking and the listener hearing, and the main reason one of the parties are accidentally interrupting and talking over the other party. A latency test will check to see how long it takes for a data packet to traverse the network from sender to receiver and back (a “round trip” measurement). and identify if the network has issues that require attention.
Packet loss
Packet loss refers to the percentage of data packets that get lost or dropped whilst traversing the network and fail to reach their destination. This often occurs when there’s network congestion, or lower than required bandwidth.
When packet loss occurs, the caller or receiver might only hear every other word or experience gaps in the conversation.
Mean Opinion Score (MOS) – Overall Call Quality
A mean opinion score (MOS) is an evaluation of call quality based on a combination of subjective and objective calculations from:
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- Listener ratings (less common now)
- Automated algorithms that measure latency, clarity, jitter, packet loss, background noise, and audio compression.
The MOS score is out of 5, 1 being bad and 5 being excellent.
The most common automated MOS scoring models are PESQ (Perceptual Evaluation of Speech Quality), POLQA (Perceptual Objective Listening Quality Analysis), and the E-Model, which is a predictive model that uses network metrics rather than voice samples.
To predict overall call quality, companies can calculate the R-Factor, which can later be converted into a MOS score. The R-Factor is a number from 0 to 100 that represents the call quality based on network performance. It’s calculated by measuring delay, packet loss, jitter, and codec type and compression. Since the R-Factor looks at issues within your network, it can accurately predict the overall call quality without having to factor in real calls.
What About VoIP Call Security?
Bad actors could be exploiting vulnerabilities in your VoIP service without you even knowing it. Since VoIP calls are conducted over the internet or cloud network, your service is more susceptible to fraudulent charges and events.
VoIP testing tools don’t just look at speed and quality; they also ensure that your service is monitored to identify early charging fraud (also known as FAS – False Answer Service), call looping, call hacking and late disconnect fraud, etc.
Fortunately, Razor’s Outbound Voice Testing tool can detect and alert when telecom fraud is occurring.
How VoIP Tests Improve Remote Agent and Homeworkers Productivity
Your VoIP phone service needs to be tested regardless of where your or your customer’s employees are working from, it may be even more important to test when employees work from remote offices, satellite offices or from home, as they face some specific challenges.
As you can imagine, your (or your customers) office-based contact center or telecommunications environment is a more controlled environment. The business maintains the Local Area Network within the office and subscribes to business grade carrier services. To some degree, remote workers may use their own home network and a generic general public internet connection and equipment that doesn’t benefit from the higher quality of service or performance guarantees, and also the homeworkers home network may be impacted by other users within the property, or even the local area (contention and congestion). That, plus the way the employee has their own network setup, will naturally introduce a higher risk of poor call quality.
A powerful VoIP test tool like Razor will stay ahead of potential problems as it has inbuilt testing features designed specifically for testing and monitoring Homeworkers and Remote Agents environments, Razors – Remote Agent to assist in maintaining a seamless communication experience for you and your customers.
Why Choose Occam for Your VoIP Testing?
Occam’s outbound voice testing solutions help organisations achieve the highest quality and integrity of outbound voice calls and routes. With automated testing and monitoring, enabling users to test calls across the world on all International Mobile Network Operators (MNOs), our advanced voice testing provides a wide range of integral monitoring and testing services, from voice quality to fraud detection.
Whether we’re testing enterprises, carriers, CCaaS Providers or conference providers, Outbound Voice Testing ensures consistent and reliable voice services.
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