In 1986, Sprint (News - Alert) launched an ad campaign focusing on the clarity and fidelity of the sound of their phone calls so much that you could “hear a pin drop” on the other side of the line. Of course, we didn’t need to literally hear a pin drop—it was just a hyperbolic attempt to claim dominance in a market where the quality of the sound in communication was a major issue at the time.
Many things have changed since then, technologically speaking. We’ve seen the mobile market change the conversation to coverage, as many providers had pockets of no service or poor network protocols and “dropped” calls were an issue. In recent years, the conversation has moved back to clarity of signal and voice, possibly because of the irritation that many customers feel when they call a business and get and automated system that is confusing, long-winded, or just doesn’t get them where they need to go.
When it comes to call and contact centers, customers often have such bad experiences that, in future calls to the businesses, if the voice on the other end of the line seems automated, has poor sound quality, or is affected in any way, many callers will hang up and never resolve their issue, resulting in the possible loss of that client to a competitor.
This highlights how important it is that businesses invest in hosted phone systems that can provide not only the best when it comes to features, but the best in voice quality as well.
With hosted phone systems that rely on VoIP technology, voice clarity is hardly an issue.
It was a common misconception that VoIP’s voice quality is inferior. This simply isn’t true. Broadband has improved over the years, so VoIP has improved as well. Today, packets are able to travel through the Internet extremely fast, delivering crisp, clear VoIP at a fraction of the cost of traditional telephony.
Recent news has demonstrated how companies are integrating technologies to provide the best voice qualities to their customers whose businesses rely on exceptional contact center solutions to provide the best in voice quality.
One such company, Integrated Research, recently announced its expanded voice quality capabilities for Avaya (News - Alert) customers. This will allow contact center and unified communications customers of Avaya, a BroadConnect technology partner, to harness the power of Prognosis (News - Alert) to analyze the health, performance and quality of voice services across different systems, sites and networks.
“With this combined Avaya-Prognosis solution, the customer can have ironclad, multi-layered VoIP security and still get complete end-to-end and hop-by-hop real-time performance visibility of the network. This powerful solution provides our customers with ‘single pane of glass’ insight, secure VoIP, SIP trunks, videoconferencing, instant messaging, and cloud-based communications for any business or contact center,” shared Greg Pelton, chief technology officer of Avaya Government Solutions.
With a hosted phone system, there is more functionality than a traditional phone system, without the costs of managing and maintaining a PBX (News - Alert). With a hosted system, calls are as good or better than landline calls and at very least they are better than mobile phone quality. Where Internet connectivity is at its best ever, hosted phone providers can support high definition audio for a calling experience never before possible with traditional phone service.
Edited by Alisen Downey