Do you know anyone who still uses a landline phone? They’re becoming obsolete. In contrast, the VoIP market is expected to expand beyond $140 billion in 2021. There are certainly many reasons why VoIP has gained so much traction in communication. But, what if people can’t hear what you’re saying?

Is VoIP truly effective when your conversations sound garbled or your calls drop when you least expect it? How would that look when you’re trying to close a crucial business deal with a potential partner? However, when you partner with a VoIP managed services provider, you can experience excellent voice quality and a significant improvement over any potential VoIP issues.

Nonetheless, you can do things such as asking your VoIP managed services provider to adjust your hardware and network and pinpoint the specific issue to ensure a faster fix. In addition, you should reach out to your Internet Service Provider (ISP) to verify whether or not they are suffering service issues and outages. Static can ruin business communications and even client management. So, try these options for improving VoIP call quality:

1. Invest in a good headset.
Isn’t this obvious? Nonetheless, many end users rely on low-quality headsets. Your employees may use these headsets to save on home office costs and not realize they affect VoIP call quality. The best thing to do is to provide your staff with good-quality headsets that have insulated cables. Even with the upfront investment, they are worth it especially if you communicate with clients regularly.

2. Check your bandwidth
If there are too many programs running on your laptop at once, this may affect VoIP call quality. The same is true if you have previously downloaded too many online files. Ask your VoIP managed services provider to help you fix this problem – it wouldn’t take long. You may also take a look at your desktop Task Manager or Activity Monitor to see if there are any hangups.

3. Verify sound settings
Are you still using the default sound settings? Perhaps it’s time to check your volume levels. You can also reach out to your VoIP managed services provider to see if they can customize your audio settings and to ensure your VoIP software is updated.

Does your router understand VoIP?

If you work remotely, it would be best to partner with a VoIP managed services provider and not use a standard home router to transmit company VoIP calls. Your VoIP managed services provider would offer a system that prioritizes VoIP traffic and are customized depending on use. Keep in mind, this can get highly technical and requires expertise. Further, it is a fast-growing issue for remote employees as home routers do not have the advanced features needed to protect VoIP traffic. With your VoIP vendor, you can get routers to support Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) and LAN (VLAN) support.

Network traffic monitoring

There are many things that can affect VoIP call quality, and network traffic is one of them. Again, network monitoring is not something you want to worry about nor do you want your employees to worry about it. Every remote employee should only be worried about talking to and helping as many clients as they can per day and not whether their VoIP call quality will affect their conversations. In this case, your VoIP managed services provider will protect your VoIP traffic stream and monitor your network so that they can tag which packet streams carry your VoIP data. Moreover, they can dedicate a portion of your bandwidth so that it only carries your VoIP voice traffic regardless of what any other employee is doing on the company network. Isn’t that reassuring?

Is the Internet connection to blame?

Without question, a bad Internet connection can induce all sorts of issues including echo-like call quality and muffled voices on the other end of the line. The last thing you need is for a client to hang up because they can’t hear you clearly. Next thing you know, everyone is playing the waiting game and no one knows when to call back or who should re-initiate the call. It’s time to reach out to professionals who can offer immediate IT support and make sure call quality issues are a thing of the past.

Hire experts

VoIP became popular as a DIY option that is simple to install, generally. Even IT novices can implement business-grade VoIP using a setup wizard – mostly. Yet, when performance is lacking, voices are garbled, and calls are dropping – it is time to consider hiring a VoIP managed services provider. Fortunately, an expert team can do much more than install and maintain your organization’s VoIP system. Here at SSI, we can optimize your Wi-Fi coverage to ensure high-quality VoIP calls. And, we implement advanced features such as protecting and securing your VoIP transmissions along with custom integrations that easily connect to your back-end systems. If desired, we can incorporate an auto-attendant, automated shared scheduling, automated shared meetings, call analytics, and dashboards. We offer plans customized for your business needs. Want to learn more about how you can improve your VoIP call quality? Follow the tips above, and contact the experts at SSI today.