{"id":8837,"date":"2010-09-20T11:24:52","date_gmt":"2010-09-20T11:24:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.tmcnet.com\/blog\/rich-tehrani\/e-commerce\/improve_call_quality_and_save_lives.html"},"modified":"2010-09-20T11:24:52","modified_gmt":"2010-09-20T11:24:52","slug":"improve-call-quality-and-save-lives","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.tmcnet.com\/blog\/rich-tehrani\/technology\/improve-call-quality-and-save-lives.html","title":{"rendered":"Improve Call Quality and Save Lives"},"content":{"rendered":"

Apologies for the extreme headline – but please hear me out  \"\"
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I just couldn’t help think about how stress impacts health as I read a new survey from Empirix<\/a> showing that poor customer service in organizations not only costs companies billions of dollars but it adds to customer stress. More than a third of call center calls have poor voice quality according to the survey and more important is the fact that 30% of consumers surveyed said they had voice quality problems with more than half their calls while up to 68% of these people would hang up and potentially call a competitor.<\/p>\n

So roughly 20% of customers calling could be hanging up and calling the competition because voice quality is sub par.<\/p>\n

Now if you are a company looking to provide the best voice quality in your call center, you face more challenges by the day as users switch to cell phones and AT&T in particular who is known to have poor voice quality on their overtaxed network. Moreover, as consumers look to save money they continue to use Internet telephony while flooding their networks with P2P, video  and other traffic. This in turn means the customer’s own network could be the major cause of quality problems.<\/p>\n

These increasing challenges obviously show companies need to over-deliver on their contact center voice quality and in doing so they reduce stress which of course means we can all be just a little bit healthier.<\/p>\n

Here is the release for more:<\/p>\n

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Survey Says: 79 Percent of Consumers Have Experienced Poor Voice Quality with Call Centers Costing Organizations Billions Globally<\/b><\/p>\n

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Poor Voice Quality Drives Down Sales and Gives Business Away to Competitors<\/em><\/p>\n

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Bedford, MA – September 20, 2010 – <\/b>Empirix Inc.<\/a>, the market leader of service quality assurance solutions for new IP communications<\/a>, today announced it commissioned a global survey that highlights the hidden costs and consumer impact of issues that are at the heart of how an organization communicates and satisfies their customers. According to a recent survey undertaken by the Customer Experience Foundation (CEF) on behalf of Empirix Inc., 79 percent of consumers have experienced poor voice quality. The study asked 3,925 consumers about their experiences in dealing with contact centers and identified technology related trends and common problems that are affecting customer service and costing organizations around the world billions of dollars.<\/p>\n

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The high percentage of global consumers that highlighted poor voice quality as a common problem points to a real issue in the industry. The study also revealed that poor voice quality drives down sales volumes, increases call lengths and the number of calls that are forced to be redialed. As a result, churn rates can increase for both customers and staff. The magnitude of the problem is indicative of how much businesses are struggling to come to terms with this issue, while consumers are quickly losing patience.<\/p>\n

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“The word most associated in the study by consumers with poor voice quality was stress, <\/em>which is not a word organizations want associated with their customers’ experiences,” said Tim Moynihan, vice president of marketing, Enterprise business unit, Empirix. “Nearly half of the consumers who commented also felt that poor voice quality was a sign that companies really didn’t value their business–at a time when ensuring customer loyalty is more important than ever in any industry. When you analyze the problems with the core issue of poor voice quality, it equates to costing the industry billions of dollars, directly impacting the bottom line of organizations across the globe. Empirix has always been committed to providing enterprise solutions<\/a>that guarantee the highest possible quality.”<\/p>\n

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Other key survey findings include:<\/p>\n