Virtual PBX Featured Article

2Hz's Krisp App Uses AI to Cancel Background Noise on Calls

July 12, 2019

By Tracey E. Schelmetic - Virtual PBX Contributor

Contact centers today strive for excellence in all things: agent training, short hold times, first-call resolution and high promoter scores from customers. One thing they have less success in controlling is background noise.

Since it’s hardly economically viable to give each employee their own soundproofed space, background noise from other calls inevitably creeps into nearly every voice transaction a contact center engages in. Noise canceling headsets can only go so far in eliminating the noise. 2Hz’s Krisp desktop app may be the next big thing for noise elimination in contact centers: it uses machine learning to subtract background noise. The technology, which was debuted as a prototype last year, uses a deep understanding of the human voice to keep what’s supposed to be there and eliminate what isn’t.


“Imagine multiple people speaking to a machine in a busy and noisy street,” according to 2Hz’s blog. “Now imagine that the machine is able to separately understand what each of the people is saying (or maybe yelling), their average age, gender and mood, is able to distinguish every sound in the background and answer back to everyone in the manner necessary for it.”

Specifically, the app is able to filter and clarify calls in three ways.

  • It can fix voice breakups in the audio caused by bad network conditions.
  • It can suppress background noise and leaves only human voice in the audio.
  • Finally, it can expand the audio resolution from lowband to wideband.

The latter is important in cases where call centers are using voice over IP telephony and the call quality is poor. In addition, from a call center’s perspective, it can improve speech recognition accuracy, which is important in self-service applications, and enhance audio in recordings, which are used by contact centers for training and quality control.

To give the technology a test run in a contact center environment, 2Hz has formed a partnership with business process outsourcing company Sitel Group for an early access program. Sitel will be the first BPO company to deploy Krisp for agents and customers to help improve the quality of contact-center based calling, self-service and recordings.

To learn more about how artificial intelligence and machine learning can enhance contact center communications, register for the Future of Work Expo, which will take place in Fort Lauderdale, Florida from February 12 to 14. For more information or to register, visit the Future of Work Expo website.




Edited by Maurice Nagle

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