The most common worry about moving a call centre into a browser is bandwidth. It is almost always the wrong worry.
The actual numbers
A voice call over the internet uses roughly 100 kilobits per second in each direction, depending on the codec. That is about a tenth of a megabit.
Ten agents on calls simultaneously: about 1 Mbps up and 1 Mbps down for the voice. Add the browser, the CRM and everything else people do, and a 10 Mbps connection comfortably runs a ten-person desk.
If somebody is selling you a 50 Mbps line for five agents on the grounds that voice is bandwidth-hungry, they are mistaken.
What actually breaks calls
Three things, none of them speed.
Jitter. Voice packets arriving unevenly. The call sounds choppy or robotic. This is the commonest cause of a bad call and it has nothing to do with how fast the line is.
Packet loss. Bits of the call simply missing. Above about 1% it is noticeable; above 3% it is unusable. A line can test at 100 Mbps and still drop packets.
Latency. Delay. Above roughly 150 milliseconds each way, people start talking over each other because the natural rhythm of conversation breaks.
A cheap, steady fibre line beats a fast, erratic one every time. This is why the question to ask a provider is not “how fast” but “how consistent”.
How to test before you commit
Do not take the sales figure. Test the line you will actually use, from the desk where people will actually sit.
Run a continuous ping for an hour to a reliable destination, during your busy period. You are looking at the variation, not the average. If the response time swings wildly, that is jitter and your calls will suffer.
Test at the worst time. Mid-morning on a weekday, when the neighbourhood is also online. A line that is perfect at seven in the evening tells you nothing.
Make twenty real calls. Before committing to a twelve-month contract, run a trial on the actual connection and listen.
Wi-Fi is the usual culprit
A surprising share of “the internet is bad” complaints are Wi-Fi complaints.
Agents on calls should be on a cable where possible. Wi-Fi in a room with twenty devices, a microwave and a concrete wall produces exactly the jitter that ruins calls, on a connection that tests perfectly.
If cable is impossible, keep the access point close, on the 5 GHz band, and do not share it with the warehouse’s stock-taking tablets.
Power
In much of Kenya this matters more than bandwidth.
Your agents’ computers and your router both need to survive a cut. A small UPS on the router and the switch costs little and keeps the line alive; laptops have their own batteries, which is a quiet argument for laptops over desktops.
What you cannot control is the customer’s power, or your provider’s. Which is why the ability to route calls to agents’ mobile phones when the office goes dark is worth having configured before you need it, rather than discovered during an outage.
Agents at home
A single agent at home needs very little — a steady 5 Mbps connection is plenty for voice plus a browser.
The practical issues are different: whether their line is steady at the hours they work, whether anybody else in the house is streaming, and whether they have a cabled option. There is a separate article on home working.
The short version
- Budget roughly 0.1 Mbps per concurrent call, then stop worrying about speed
- Buy stability, not megabits
- Test for an hour at the busy time, not for a minute at the quiet one
- Use cable for agents
- Put the router on a UPS
- Have a fallback to mobile phones configured in advance