Poor voice quality is driving customer away, says survey

FOUR out of five consumers report poor voice quality in call centres, says a survey.  About a third said it had happened in more than half of their calls.

Nearly 70pc of those said that they would usually hang up as a result and – if calling about a new product or service – they then call a competing company.

The survey was carried out by the Customer Experience Foundation (CEF) on behalf of an IP supplier, Empirix.

Professor Morris Pentel, chairman of CEF, said: “Consumers are quickly losing patience with companies that suffer from poor voice quality — truth is, it’s a consumer’s market; they have choices in today’s market.

“Consumers are having major issues that they will not tolerate, which has obvious ramifications for businesses.

”Customer and agent churn will increase if they are unable to communicate with each other, not to mention the loss of new business opportunities, such as upsells or new products and offerings

“Organisations with a reputation for poor customer service are simply pushing their customers toward their competitors, which impacts market share and the bottom line.”

Empirix, which offers testing and monitoring products, says the problem is often blamed on background noise, poor headsets, loose connections, bad home VoIP, poor transit by carriers and bad mobile phone connections and handsets.