How to choose a call center termination route

Start with your traffic

Write down your destinations, daily volume, peak concurrent calls and call rate. A provider that is excellent for 20 channels may not be right for 2,000, and one that is right for the UK may not be right for Singapore.

Checklist

• Quality: request ASR, ACD and PDD per destination, and test with your own campaign
• CLI: confirm what is required and what is passed through
• Capacity: channels and calls per second, and how fast limits can be raised
• Billing: increment (1/1, 6/6, 60/60), billing cycle, minimum top-up and payment methods
• Rates: written rate sheet with effective dates and notice of changes
• Technical: SIP transport, codecs, DTMF and authentication supported
• Support: who answers at 3am when a route fails
• Compliance: how the carrier handles fraud, abuse and complaints

Read the billing increment

A 60/60 increment rounds every call up to the next minute. For short dialer calls this can raise your real cost well above the headline rate, so compare effective cost per call, not just rate per minute.

Run a proper test

Send real traffic for at least a day or two, across your busy hours, and compare answer rate, call length and delay with your current provider. Keep a backup route while you test.