Noise is a nuisance.
It distracts us and interrupts our concentration.
During a conversation, it can throw us off course or, worse still, cause us to mis-hear or misunderstand.
In a business setting, those conversations – when occurring in voice or video calls – can have a lot riding on them. Customer interactions with contact centre agents, for example. Or virtual meetings with clients and colleagues.
In all those cases, noisy backgrounds can be more than just an annoyance: they can sometimes cause a conversation to be stilted or strained. And when that happens, the resultant reduction in call quality can negatively impact on everyone’s desired outcomes.
The fix? Audio and video conferencing solutions with the smarts to ensure complete clarity.
“Noisy environments create stress and increase cognitive load for those who work in them – we have developed an algorithm that is able to filter out literally everything apart from the spoken word,” says Andreas Orebo Wenzel, Global Leader of Engage AI at leading audio and video solutions provider Jabra, whose ‘ClearSpeech’ upgrade to its award-nominated Engage AI software-as-a-service solution brings 360° crystal clear audio to its headsets, microphones, and speakers.
“Suppressing background noise enables the brain to work less hard and aids people’s productivity. That means a more pleasant experience for those on both sides of any conversation.”
Indeed, in today’s always-on, mobile-first world, customers reach out at times and in locations which can challenge the quality of any voice interaction. And, in turn, those tasked with fielding those calls may be at home, in a coffee shop, or on the move as opposed to sat at a desk in a traditional call center. Those uncontrolled environments can be subject to all kinds of problematic background noise, such as wind, traffic noise, and peripheral voices.
Research carried out by Jabra shows that three quarters of workers it interviewed experienced tiredness as a result of working in a loud environment. Three quarters also said conversations with callers were negatively impacted by background noise. And three quarters said clear, high-quality audio enhanced their ability to focus.
Crucially – and uniquely – Jabra’s ClearSpeech addresses all of those issues by cleverly controlling both sides of a call.
“The hardware – our noise-cancelling headsets – takes care of things on the call hander’s end, but the software – our new ClearSpeech solution – goes the extra mile and is able to filter out unwanted noise on the caller’s end too,” says Orebo Wenzel.
“Imagine a call handler in a noisy environment taking a call from a customer in, say, their car. Both are not only subject to background noise in their own situations, but they are also exposing each other to that noise too. The same is the case for colleagues on business calls or virtual meetings where they are perhaps in a coffee shop, a trade fair, or on a train. These hybrid ways of working mean people are often in uncontrollable noise environments. However, thanks to ClearSpeech, there is no longer a negative impact.”
The benefits are not confined only to voice calling either.
AI-powered technologies such as speech-to-text transcription are now delivering huge productivity enhancements to millions, but quality and accuracy can be adversely affected by poor quality audio. Background noise polluting a conversation can result in a high word error rate: leading to inaccurate transcription and an annoying need to conduct time-wasting document reviews.
“In that case, the productivity benefits of the AI are being nullified by the frailties of the audio,” says Orebo Wenzel.
“Because we are relying more and more on the smarts of those tools, inaccurate transcriptions due to poor audio have become the new annoyance. If the AI seems not to be working effectively in that way, users will lose trust and deployment will reduce. For a business that has rightly invested heavily in that technology, the returns will therefore diminish. That cannot be allowed to happen.”
In a world in which actual conversations occur in increasingly virtual scenarios, it seems the importance of audio quality has never been greater.
- To learn more about how Jabra can help your and your customers’ businesses leverage the benefits of Jabra ClearSpeech, click here.
