India global VoIP readiness checklist

Start from the numbers your customers dial and see, not from the phone system.

• List every number customers call today, which client it belongs to and who holds the contract for it.
• List the countries and number types (local, mobile, toll-free) each client programme needs.
• Ask your provider which documents each country requires, such as a local address or business registration, and who supplies them.
• For numbers you keep, confirm porting eligibility, the expected timeline and what happens to calls during the port.
• Decide which number each outbound programme shows as caller ID, and confirm you are authorised to use it.

Write down where every call should go before anyone configures anything.

• Set business hours per client in the client's own time zone, not only in Indian Standard Time.
• Define after-hours, holiday and overflow destinations, including the clients' own public holidays.
• Decide how calls hand over between India-based and onshore teams, and who owns an unanswered call.
• Document escalation paths for urgent calls, such as a shipment exception or a priority IT incident.

Each client usually expects its own experience. Keep flows separate and simple.

• Draft the greeting and menu per client, in the languages the client's customers use.
• Name one queue per client programme so reporting never mixes clients.
• Decide where voicemail goes, who reviews it and how quickly it must be returned.
• Agree with each client whether calls are recorded, how callers are told, how long recordings are kept and who may access them.
• Write test calls for every path: in hours, after hours, overflow, voicemail and transfer.

India Standard Time is UTC+5:30 with no daylight saving; most of your customers' countries change their clocks.

• Map shifts to client hours for both clock periods.Example: 9 AM–5 PM US Eastern is 7:30 PM–3:30 AM IST in winter and 6:30 PM–2:30 AM IST in summer. 9 AM UK time is 2:30 PM IST in winter and 1:30 PM IST in summer.
• Mark the weeks when US and UK/EU clocks change on different dates and adjust rosters.The US changes on the second Sunday of March and the first Sunday of November; the UK and EU on the last Sundays of March and October.
• Forecast agents per shift from real call volumes, including Monday peaks and client seasonal peaks.
• Assign who can change routing, who supervises live queues and who reviews recordings.
• Plan agent training on the new app before the pilot, including transfers and handling a dropped call.

Headsets and workstations cause more call-quality complaints than most teams expect.

• Standardise on wired or business-grade USB or Bluetooth headsets with noise cancelling for open floors.
• Check that agent computers and browsers meet the provider's stated requirements.
• Decide whether supervisors and on-call staff use the mobile app, and on whose devices.
• If you need desk phones, confirm which models are supported before buying any.

Voice needs a stable connection more than a fast one. Measure from every location that will take calls, including homes.

• Size bandwidth for your busiest hour of simultaneous calls, with headroom.Rule of thumb: an uncompressed G.711 call uses roughly 87 kbps in each direction including network overhead; compressed codecs use less. Ask which codecs your provider uses.
• Measure latency, jitter and packet loss at the times your shifts run, not only during the day.Common targets: one-way delay under 150 ms (ITU-T G.114), jitter under 30 ms and packet loss under 1%.
• Provide a second internet connection or a documented fallback for sites that handle client calls.
• Check power backup for routers and switches, not only for computers.
• Give your network team the provider's firewall and port requirements, and prioritise voice traffic where your equipment allows.
• Set a minimum standard for home-working connections and a way to test them.

Questions to take to qualified counsel and to your clients. This list is general information, not legal advice, and rules change.

• India: how do the Department of Telecommunications rules on internet telephony apply to your setup, and how does the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023 apply to the data you handle?
• United States: do your outbound calls or texts fall under the TCPA, the FTC Telemarketing Sales Rule or the National Do Not Call Registry, and which states you call require every party's consent to recording?
• Canada: do the CRTC Unsolicited Telecommunications Rules and the National Do Not Call List apply to your calls, and does CASL apply to your text messages?
• United Kingdom: do you need to screen against the TPS and CTPS, and how do PECR and UK GDPR apply to marketing calls and recordings?
• European Union: what is your lawful basis under GDPR for recordings and for transferring EU personal data to India, and which national rules on marketing calls apply?
• Caller ID: are you authorised to present each number, and how do carriers' call authentication and labelling affect your outbound programmes?
• Client contracts: do they restrict where calls are handled, how recordings are stored or which subcontractors may be used?

Move one programme at a time and keep a way back.

• Pilot with one client programme or one team, running in parallel with the current service.
• Agree written acceptance criteria with the client before cutover: test calls passed, quality measured, reports working.
• Schedule porting or forwarding in the lowest-volume window for the client's time zone.
• Write a rollback plan: who decides, how calls return to the old route and how long it takes.
• Keep the old service active until the new one is accepted, then cancel it on a fixed date.

Record a baseline before the pilot so the comparison afterwards is real.

• Capture a baseline per client: answer rate, abandonment rate, average speed of answer and average handle time.
• Track call-quality complaints per site and per agent, and investigate patterns rather than single calls.
• Map each metric to what the client contract or scorecard measures.
• Compare the same metrics 30 days after cutover and decide whether to move the next programme.