Call Quality Assurance Relies On These 2 Things

To ensure call quality assurance, you need two things: a provider with a stable network and a tool that monitors call quality — the kind which instantly tells you when call quality becomes an issue," Lauren Brockman, senior director of product management at Bandwidth, told Channel Futures. 

Guaranteeing call center quality assurance is paramount, Brockman notes.

"If customers can’t reach you, the impact extends to both revenue and customer satisfaction. And if bad actors get through, the liability can be enormous. In addition, many new AI (artificial intelligence) and machine learning tools require high call quality to function," she said.

Bandwidth's Lauren Brockman

With the potential for so much to go wrong, getting call quality assurance right in the contact center environment is a pivotal part of customer (CX) and user experience (UX).

"No amount of tooling will help if the underlying network isn’t solid and redundant, meaning enterprises should look for providers with direct binds and peering relationships to minimize the hops a call has to take," Brockman argues.

On facilitating mission-critical toll-free calling, Brockman said, "the best provider is one that owns their network while also partnering with others to ensure maximum redundancy and resiliency." 

Analytics: A Contact Center's Best Friend 

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According to Brockman, "analytics tools will often be available in several places: your CCaaS platform itself, your session border controller if you have one, and sometimes with your carrier." These tools are typically easy and intuitive to navigate, she added.

"You should start by setting up threshold alerts on parameters like dollars, capacity, call quality, concurrency and country," said Brockman.

She told Channel Futures that knowing when and where issues occur can trigger a series of downstream troubleshooting decisions and can "influence if you need to take more significant steps — like changing carriers, adding more wireless access points, or adding more capacity in your WAN (wide area network)/LAN (local area network)."

Data Helps Realize Call Center Quality Assurance 

Data are everywhere in a contact center environment, especially in phone calls. And it can lead to a lot more beyond agent training, too, things such as helping "reduce risk and shed nuisance calls," Brockman told us.

"Phone calls are rich with information about the caller, and some tools allow you to verify the caller with varying degrees of probability that can then influence how you authenticate the caller and avoid social engineering scams that threaten you and your customers."

Here is why some providers have features like caller verification that helps avoid spoofed and fraudulent calls. Said features should be integrated directly into networks, she added. 

With such a great deal of nuance in enabling call quality assurance in this setting, opportunity for channel partners is plentiful. Regarding selling, deploying, and managing these tools, the chance for revenue is endless.

"Many companies don’t have the staffing or expertise to provide front-line support for mission-critical contact center operations," which is where partners come in, Brockman told us.

Companies in the contact-center business have a responsibility as well. Brockman said that's why providers must integrate more services into their networks "to make it faster and easier for IT teams to deploy best-in-class capabilities to deliver a better customer and agent experience."