5 VoIP Scalability Pitfalls You Don't See Coming

If you have hit scalability pitfalls with your phone system, you probably did not pick the right VoIP partner. The good news is that the warning signs are easy to spot once you know what to look for.

Ever wonder why sidewalks are poured in segments? What is the point of those funky strips of wood between the sections, anyway? All they seem to do is create places for weeds to grow. The true objective is far more important: expansion and contraction.

Your business is like a sidewalk. You have to plan for times when you will need more resources, and you also need to be prepared to respond when it is time to pull back. We all know this as scalability. The tools you rely on to run smoothly must respond to the inevitable ups and downs of business cycles.

Here are five common "wish I had thought of that" scalability factors that should be part of any cloud phone system you consider.

1. The whole shebang: only pay for what you need

One thing you should never have to worry about with a good VoIP platform is the "not enough" problem. Your vendor should not push you to invest in more equipment than you currently need. If you need to scale up for seasonal reasons or a spike in business, the upgrade is often just a software change and more bandwidth. Likewise, scaling down simply means software adjustments and a smaller monthly bandwidth plan. Because VoIP often costs around 30 percent less than legacy phone service, that flexibility usually saves money on the way up and on the way down.

Not everything, though, is this easy.

2. Chop-chop: fixing choppy call quality

You are walking through the call center and hearing a lot of apologies. "Sorry, could you repeat that?" echoes through the room. The VoIP system is experiencing what is commonly called choppiness.

This is usually caused by packet loss tied to high latency. Latency is easy to picture: it is the amount of time it takes for a packet of information, in this case digitized voice, to leave the source and reach you, or the other way around. If those packets travel at different speeds, they do not arrive in order. The call is reassembled with parts missing, and you and the caller hear only what gets through in the order it was sent.

This should only happen if your current VoIP infrastructure is being overtaxed. Make sure your vendor can configure your router and firewall to prioritize voice data. Ask what is required to isolate video and other high-bandwidth traffic so it is not fighting with your call center's voice needs. Can they do that for you?

Your platform vendor will likely handle this by upgrading the router. It can also be managed through software that uses multi-protocol label switching to balance data and bandwidth. This is one reason the underlying network matters so much, and why we run on a 99.999 percent uptime network built to keep voice traffic clean.

3. Time to delegate: give voice traffic its own lane

VoIP systems are supposed to save you money, and they do. Often, the first noticeable savings come from your ability to use existing phones. It is also frequently possible to start off on your existing network. But that means you are using the same infrastructure for voice and for everyday computer activity.

At first, everybody plays nice. Then call quality can start to suffer, because digital voice needs dedicated bandwidth.

If you plan to grow, make sure your platform vendor inspects your current internal network and is ready to reconfigure or expand it so voice traffic always gets priority. Be prepared to upgrade to a business-class router to maintain call quality. The next step is to add a dedicated network connection just for VoIP.

4. Your ISP is just not that into you

Of course your current Internet Service Provider is going to say, "of course." Yes, they are "more than capable of handling all your bandwidth needs." They have "state of the art hardware and excess capacity," with a few more benefit statements printed on the shiny brochure.

You, however, are not their only customer.

Many ISPs are already strained, or soon will be, by the growing demand for bandwidth. And like you, they are always chasing more customers. Most ISPs did not start out built to handle the heavy, steady load of voice data, and some struggle to keep up. They are not going to volunteer that.

Task your VoIP vendor with being honest in their evaluation of your current ISP. Will it deliver the reliable, consistent bandwidth you need for VoIP telephony? Strong VoIP platform providers often solve this by taking on the responsibility themselves, so more of the path is under their control.

This approach is often preferable. The majority of your VoIP platform is cloud-based, and a connection your vendor controls, from your phones to their system in the cloud, means fewer elements outside their control. They can scale resources up or down as you need them. In many cases, they have constant monitoring in place so it happens without any effort on your part.

5. Planning for what you do not yet know

It is easy to ask a VoIP vendor for a proposal based on your current needs. It is even fairly easy to ask them to project what you might need across a handful of growth scenarios. What is not so easy is asking a vendor to look into a crystal ball and tell you what the breakneck speed of technological change will lay at your business door.

How, for example, will the Internet of Things (IoT) affect your VoIP scalability? If you are not yet impressed by the impact of smart refrigerators and thermostats, consider what is right on the edge of your horizon. Unified Communications (UC) is what you might call the one ring to rule them all. The convergence of VoIP and UC keeps accelerating, as collaborative apps push messaging and chat toward usage levels that rival email.

A newer wave is now reshaping the same picture: AI. An AI Voice Agent can answer calls, transcribe conversations, and route callers based on what your CRM knows about them, all on the same cloud platform you already use for voice. That is a capability most growing businesses did not plan for a few years ago, which is exactly why future-readiness belongs on your scalability checklist.

How do you plan for things like that? You cannot, exactly. But you can choose a VoIP vendor that is looking out for your future and has already laid the groundwork to fold these capabilities into your current solution.

The takeaway: scalability is a vendor decision

You cannot predict the future, but you can prepare for it. The top benefit of a cloud VoIP platform is that it is highly scalable, with solutions that respond quickly to fluctuating needs. Businesses that switch often find the flexibility helps them shed rigid thinking in other areas too.

So if you look back at these five scalability pitfalls and conclude they are not really pitfalls at all, then we have done our job. Pick the right VoIP platform vendor and future scalability struggles fade away. To go deeper on choosing well, see our guide to questions to ask potential VoIP providers and how a scalable VoIP phone system gets you away from your desk.

Ready to see a platform built to scale with you? Explore the CallSprout platform or book a demo to find out why we are the right vendor.