Organizations that place a strong emphasis on the customer experience will likely want to consider leveraging wideband or high definition voice in their contact centers, as it becomes available, for the purpose of improving agent-customer interactions.

Although it is an emerging technology that is far from ubiquitous (plus it is more expensive to implement and maintain as a service, compared to traditional VoIP), high definition or HD voice appears ready for widespread adoption. Many service providers are now offering it and some organizations are already making regular use of it.

In the contact center, HD voice delivers improved communications by allowing agents to hear every customer utterance clearly, thereby reducing input errors and/or the need to ask customers to repeat information. What's more it improves the customer experience by allowing customers to hear agents so clearly that they practically sound like they are in the same room.

Needless to say, internal communications are improved immensely thanks to the greater dynamic range and improved clarity that HD voice delivers. The question for organizations that have deployed HD voice, or which plan to, is whether there is value in extending it to the contact center.

In order to implement HD voice properly, every piece of equipment, every end point on the contact center network must be IP- and wideband codec-enabled - including agents' contact center headsets. Obviously there is not much point in implementing HD voice if you are not going to provide your agents with headsets that are capable of properly reproducing the high definition audio signals it delivers.

Sennheiser's CC 550 IP contact center headset -- the IP version of its top-of-the-line CC 500 contact center headset -- improves overall call quality when connected to an HD voice network. Compared with traditional narrowband headsets, wideband technology offers a more natural and warm sound, and captures more speech details at high and low frequencies. The CC 550 IP delivers natural high-definition sound for superior voice clarity, accented speaker recognition and reduced echo. The benefits are increased productivity and reduced fatigue for contact center agents.

This top-of-the-line headset features a Teflon washer-stabilized adjustable microphone boom for precise microphone placement -- which becomes all the more important when it comes to HD voice. The contact center headset also sports generously padded extra-large ear pads (that block out external noise) and an adjustable dual-padded headband that evenly distribute pressure for long-wearing comfort.

The CC 550 IP also includes Sennheiser's patended ActiveGard technology that protects against acoustic shock and sudden sound surges.

To learn more about this high-end- HD voice-enabled contact center headset, click here.

Patrick Barnard is a senior Web editor for TMCnet, covering call and contact center technologies. He also compiles and regularly contributes to TMCnet e-Newsletters in the areas of robotics, IT, M2M, OCS and customer interaction solutions. To read more of Patrick's articles, please visit his columnist page.

Edited by Patrick Barnard