In-country number dialing tests phone numbers by placing real calls from within the same country where customers are located, using local carrier networks. Unlike simulated testing, it accurately measures voice quality, tests toll-free numbers, transmits local ANI/CLI, and identifies root causes of issues, providing the reliable insights businesses need to assure global CX quality.
When your customers place a call to your contact center, they expect quick and seamless support, without any issues or delays. However, when your phone lines aren’t correctly optimized, your global customers may be exposed to poor audio quality and long wait times, and that’s if they can connect to your agents at all. Your business’ long-term success hinges on your ability to deliver quality interactions, regardless of where your customers may be located. But accurately evaluating your call performance is no easy feat, requiring you to conduct local calls from every country you support.
Unfortunately, most businesses lack the resources and bandwidth to complete this rigorous testing, and they are forced to put their CX quality in jeopardy. That’s why they need an automated call testing solution.
While some CX providers claim to help you assure voice quality with simulated testing environments, you must leverage true in-country number dialing to reflect real-world conditions, or risk falling victim to incomplete data.
In-country number dialing is the practice of testing phone numbers by placing real calls from within the same country where customers are located, using local carrier networks and points of presence (PoPs), physical locations where carriers connect to local telecommunications infrastructure.
What are the risks of simulated carrier testing?
There are many substandard interactive voice response (IVR) and carrier testing solutions on the market that claim to assure voice quality. But these solutions use simulated environments. Instead of conducting tests from the countries and regions where your real-world customers are located, these providers simulate results with global telephony networks. And while this may seem sufficient, these providers leave you with detrimental vulnerabilities and fail to provide the insights you need to accurately improve your customer experience offerings.
Key limitations of simulated carrier testing include:
- Inability to test toll-free numbers, which require calls originating from within the destination country
- Unreliable voice quality measurements due to least-cost routing that doesn’t reflect actual customer call paths
- Inability to transmit local ANI/CLI (automatic number identification/calling line identification) for personalization and caller ID testing
- Limited root cause detection when issues are identified
- Failure to verify audio quality metrics like mean opinion score (MOS), a standardized measure of voice call quality
For example, while a simulated test detects an issue impacting your phone numbers, it may be unable to tell you what the root cause is, or where you should begin troubleshooting. In other instances, a simulated test may only tell you whether a call was successfully placed or not, neglecting to verify audio quality. In these cases, the test fails to provide the insights necessary to improve your CX offerings and deliver quality interactions.
For customer-centric businesses, you can’t settle for replications. Instead of helping you pinpoint areas for improvement based on real-world conditions, simulated environments can create misleading alerts, waste your time on incorrect troubleshooting, and leave you vulnerable to compliance penalties.
For example, your customers from the United States can successfully reach out to you and interact with your IVR. But when a customer from the United Kingdom tries to call, they are unable to dial your numbers, and you will miss out on their business. While a simulated testing solution will replicate conditions in an attempt to mimic the customer’s experience in the United Kingdom, it fails to accurately detect the root cause of the issue. Based on given insights, it’s likely you will invest time, effort, and money to remediate the potential issue, only to discover your customer still can’t connect.
When it comes to customer experience, you can’t rely on guess work. It’s time to make the switch to a solution you can rely upon, without gambling your global CX performance on a second-rate shortcut.
What can in-country dialing test that simulated testing cannot?
An in-country global dialing solution allows you to test your phone numbers and telecom channels within a specific country or region. With true in-country number presence, you can eliminate inaccuracies and gain reliable insights into your global CX performance.
| Criteria | Simulated global carrier testing | True in-country dialing |
| Accuracy of results | Approximated based on global routing | Reflects actual customer experience |
| Toll-free number testing | Not possible | Fully supported |
| Voice quality measurement | Unreliable due to least-cost routing | Accurate MOS and latency metrics |
| ANI/CLI transmission | Cannot transmit local caller ID | Transmits local ANI/CLI for personalization testing |
| Root cause detection | Limited diagnostic capability | Pinpoints carrier, region, and network issues |
In-country testing originates real-time calls from your customers’ locations to precisely measure components including call connection rates, audio quality, voice latency, call line identity, dual-tone multi-frequency (DTMF) tone transmission, and more. With in-country dialing, you can perform more than 50 types of testing across 145+ countries and 420+ carrier networks on your in-country or interstate numbers, allowing you to stay ahead of any issues that may negatively impact your customers.
By using local points of presence (PoPs) to reflect real-world conditions, in-country dialing provides accurate, actionable insights that help you overcome CX issues, such as:
- Latency and lag detection: Identify real-world delays caused by network congestion.
- Carrier-specific degradations: Mitigate potential disruptions such as static, dropped calls, and poor audio fidelity at the carrier level.
- Regional and local interruptions: Detect outages affecting specific areas as opposed to generalizing across an entire country or region.
- Data accuracy and veracity: Ensure every alert reflects actual conditions, no guess work necessary.
While simulated environments leave you vulnerable to ambiguous issues and allow issues to slip by unnoticed, in-country dialing solutions provide all the data you need to effectively test and monitor all your numbers, so you can always connect with your customers, wherever in the world they may be located.
Assure CX quality with in-country dialing
When it comes down to it, you can’t afford to let issues go unresolved, fall victim to compliance risks, or waste your time and resources on needless troubleshooting.
By investing in an in-country dialing solution, you can be confident you’re receiving genuine insights you can trust, without having to hedge your bets based on simulated and incomplete data.
Contact us today or visit cyara.com to learn how you can benefit from in-country dialing’s reliable insights.
Frequently Asked Questions
In-country number dialing is the practice of testing phone numbers by placing real calls from within the same country where customers are located, using local carrier networks and points of presence to reflect actual customer conditions.
Simulated testing routes calls through global networks using least-cost routing, which doesn’t reflect the actual path your customers’ calls take. This results in unreliable voice quality measurements that may not detect issues your real customers experience.
Toll-free number testing, local ANI/CLI transmission verification, accurate MOS voice quality measurement, and carrier-specific issue detection all require true in-country dialing to produce reliable results.
Because in-country dialing replicates actual customer call conditions, it can pinpoint the specific carrier, region, or network component causing an issue, enabling faster and more accurate troubleshooting than simulated testing.
In-country number dialing is a testing method that originates real calls from within a specific country or region to accurately reflect the experience of local customers. This approach captures real-world network conditions, carrier routing, and audio quality that simulated environments cannot replicate.
Simulated testing replicates conditions using centralized infrastructure rather than placing actual calls from a customer’s location, which can produce misleading alerts and incomplete data. This leaves businesses unable to pinpoint the true root cause of issues affecting their global phone numbers.
Voice Assure measures call connection rates, audio quality, voice latency, call line identity, dial tone transmission, and more by originating real-time calls from your customers’ locations. It supports more than 50 types of testing on in-country and interstate numbers.
In-country dialing helps identify latency and lag caused by network congestion, carrier-specific degradations like static or dropped calls, and regional outages affecting specific areas rather than an entire country.
Many toll-free numbers are restricted to specific countries and cannot be effectively tested from outside those borders. Using local points of presence ensures these numbers are reachable and functioning correctly for your customers.
Cyara Voice Assure uses local points of presence to originate real calls from your customers’ locations, providing accurate and actionable insights. Other providers rely on simulated global telephony networks that can miss carrier-specific or region-specific issues entirely.
Yes, by ensuring every alert reflects actual conditions rather than simulated data, in-country dialing helps businesses take decisive action and avoid the compliance penalties that can result from undetected or misdiagnosed phone number issues.
