As Microsoft Teams grows past the 250 million monthly active users mark it would appear that the reliance on technology to communicate is not going anywhere.
But after a year and a half of working out who’s line is interrupting the call and telling people they are on mute, it is time to ensure a level of consistency to the collaboration experiences we all have to endure.
Although initially annoying, the effects of poor audio and connectivity can have a lasting effect, with Spearline Chief Marketing Officer, Mike Palmer, saying that an inconsistent experience creates stress for the participants.
“At Spearline, we know that when employees experience things like jitter, choppiness in the audio signal, it makes them concentrate a little bit more, which causes strain if you're in a long conversation,” said Palmer.
“That causes fatigue and if employees pack their diaries full of individual meetings of 30 minutes or one hour they could do six to 12 different meetings each day. At the end of that whole experience, because they have a headset on, they're focused on the screen, and trying to move their eyes around multiple persons on the screen, there’s a real strain on the human psyche”
The Result of Stress
That fatigue can rear its head in different ways. A lot of businesses have become more aware of their employees' mental health, especially during lockdowns.
Taking the contact centre as a prime example, the stress of poor connectivity can dramatically impact the experience of both agent and customer.
“We work with the PESQ score that objectively measures the quality of the audio or voice experience on a phone call,” said Palmer. “That ranges from the very high level, where the high quality says there's no noticeable stress or difficulty in engaging in a conversation, to the lower end where the user or the listener has to actually commit themselves to understand what is going on, they have to concentrate.
“When we push that level of concentration onto a customer that creates stress. If they're ringing with a complaint or a challenging issue, to begin with, they're already stressed, and then we're putting them into that space, potentially where they've got to concentrate and now they've got physical stress on top of their emotional stress.
“That just puts the agent right in the crosshairs and sets them up for a terrible encounter with the customer. Businesses who recognize that potential problem, the psychological effects of bad audio experience and invest, will ensure a better customer experience.”
