Switchboard is extremely dependent on a good stable internet connection to work properly. Without this, the quality of your phone calls will suffer (such as loss of audio, or missed calls) and your Call Centre Agents will be unable to place orders using Switchboard.
The short sections below offer guidance on how to make sure you have the right internet connections at your Call Centre location.
What is the difference between Line Speed and Data Package Size?
Consider your internet connection as a water pipe with a tap. When the tap is open, water will flow out at a certain speed (depending on how thick the pipe is) and will continue to flow until such time as the tap is closed.
Taking the above into consideration, Line Speed refers to how fast your internet connection is able to send and receive information. This is comparable to the thickness of the pipe - the thicker the pipe the faster the water flows. The higher your line speed, the more information that can be sent and received at the same time. Typically line speed is measured in Mbps (e.g. 4Mbps or 10Mpbs). The bigger the number, the faster the speed.
Data Package Size refers to how much data you are allowed to send and receive from your internet service provider. This is comparable to being told you are only allowed to open the tap until 5L of water has flowed out. Typically data packages are measured in Gigabytes (e.g. 20GB or 100GB). In some instances, you can even activate an Uncapped data package, which means you can use as much as you want.
What type of internet connection should I get at my Call Centre?
There are a number of different connection types to access the internet. The most common being ADSL, Fibre and LTE. Depending on where your Call Centre is located, not all of these may be available.
ADSL:
You will need 2 x ADSL internet connections at the Call Centre premises. One for DATA (to access Switchboard) and another for the Telephone System (VoIP).
- 1st ADSL connection will be the Data connection and should ideally be 4Mbps or greater line speed (depending on your local Telkom exchange capacity). This can be a shared internet connection for the Aura POS & the YUMBI Call Centre Platform. For this you will need to sign-up and pay for a data package with your Internet Service Provider (e.g. Telkom, Afrihost etc).
- 2nd ADSL connection will be dedicated only to VoIP telephone calls,
- You will need to contact your internet service provider to provide you with the line rental, you do not need data or a router/modem. This will be provided by Euphoria in form of an IPC account,
- Please perform a Speedtest by clicking HERE to determine what your internet speed is and send the results to sales@yumbi.com
- ADSL no matter the speed/size can give you 8 concurrent calls.
- A single ADSL connection should be sufficient at each restaurant premises (offsite Call Centre).
Fiber:
- You can still recommend the minimum requirement SPEED.
- Fiber has a much faster internet connection, one will probably get up to 50 x that speed.
- You will need to add DATA to actually use the internet.
- When they select a DATA package, it is recommended that one gets an uncapped internet connection.
- VERY IMPORTANT - You need to arrange for QUALITY OF SERVICE (QoS) on the Fiber line. They can QoS 1 Megabyte of the Fiber (DATA) for Voice traffic. This means that
- the ISP applies a rule that 1 Megabyte is prioritized for voice traffic and is not touched by anything else,
- 1 Megabyte of Fiber gives you 25 concurrent phone calls.
In addition to these ADSL connections, it is recommended that a dedicated LTE internet connection be installed at the Call Centre premises for redundancy purposes so that in the unlikely event of ADSL infrastructure failure, customer calls will still be able to be received.