Conference calls are an important part of corporate collaboration, and with the increase in remote workers and virtual teams, they’re likely to become even more central to communications. While conference calls offer a critical connection point, the call quality is often so compromised that it becomes unclear whether much, if anything, is being accomplished on these calls.
From the wasted time waiting for everyone to get on the call, to the reminders to mute (so that you don’t hear every barking dog and police siren in the background), to people coming in and out of the call, this form of communication is far from perfect. Here are a few common issues:
“I couldn’t hear you.” Many of the problems surrounding call quality are “last mile” concerns, involving Wi-Fi or a device. Far fewer are related to network issues or server problems. There are a lot of factors involved in call quality, but enterprises should implement the metric of poor call percentage (PCP) with a goal of keeping poor calls under two percent of all communications.
“My call dropped. What were you saying?” Needing to repeat key points for a strategy or comments from a colleague wastes precious time on a conference call. The solution is a round-the-clock telemetry on service availability, measured by user experience. Unified communications offers solutions, with hardware, software, and a third-party service provider all working seamlessly together. The enterprise should have a data-driven approach to measuring service availability so that any threat to call quality can be identified through monitoring of the network, server, and gateway. Service availability should exceed 99.9 percent in any organization.
“Hold on, my headset isn’t working.” The variety of headsets being used at any given enterprise presents a challenge to managing call quality. Headsets have come a long way, but like other devices, they require firmware updates along with custom configuration. Enterprises need solutions that update firmware across a variety of devices, but also allow for centralized troubleshooting and a high level of visibility. Enterprises need a user satisfaction metric to measure how well they’re managing headset updates and troubleshooting.
The key to improving call quality, like any other business initiative, is to measure it. Include call quality metrics in your key performance indicators (KPIs), because as a major vehicle for team communication, conference calls are critical for reaching your business objectives.
Call quality is just one of the communications challenges we can address at Enterprise Visions. Contact us to discuss your current technology, as well as the potential for cost savings and efficiencies with cloud solutions.