Background Noise
Background Noise: All audio signals in the environment of an agent that might distract his attention.
Introduction
This use case is about a call center agent that works in a home office. He communicates to a customer via a Jabra Engage 50 Headset. The agent hast to ensure, that he is working in a quiet environment. This is part of his working contract.
A quiet environment is characterized by no background noise or only insignificant levels of background noise.
Different Perspectives on Background Noise
The headset Jabra Engage 50 automatically filters out the background noise in an agent's home office. This results in different perspectives on the same audio call.
| Agent | Customer | Manager | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Call Perception | The agent hears both the unfiltered background noise and his own voice. | The customer hears only the agent's voice. He is usually not aware, if an agent is exposed to background noise. Reason: The headset automatically filters background noise. |
The manager has the same perspective as the customer (if surveying the call from remote). |
| Perceived effects of Background Noise |
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The manager has the same perspective as the customer (if surveying the call from remote). |
| Objective | An agent should work in a quiet environment for his own health ans safety. | A customer wants that his agent can fully focus on the call. | A manager needs to ensure that the agent is working in a quiet environment. And he has to ensure best call experience for the customer. |
Surveying Calls
It is an established industry standard to record or survey calls for quality control. This time-consuming approach is not a suitable to detect background noise in an agent's home office. The background noise is filtered out by the agent's headset. It is not contained in the transferred audio signal of the call.
Telemetry datapoints are are a more powerful alternative to manual call monitoring.
Telemetry datapoints have this advantages:
- Background noise levels can be automatically recorded.
- It is little effort for a manager to track and to continuously analyze background noise levels of many agents simultaneously.
- Only background noise levels are recorded but not the background noise itself. This protects data privacy for both agent and customer.
Datapoint Subscription
Background noise is measured by the dedicated telemetry datapoint Background Noise in dB(A). You need to subscribe to this datapoint via SDK.
Threshold Value
Background Noise levels should not exceed a defined threshold. Here defined as 55 dB(A).
Data analysis requires a defined threshold value that marks the upper limit for acceptable background noise.
Background noise levels in a quiet environment should not exceed 55 dB(A). Higher background noise levels are an indicator for a noisy environment.
Data Analysis
As a general recommendation, it should be distinguished between:
- Sustained Noise Levels. These events span longer periods of time (>1 second). Example: An ongoing conversation in the background.
- Noise Level Spikes. These are short events (<1 second). Example: The agent puts down his coffee mug directly next to the microphone.
The analysis should primarily focus on sustained noise levels because these are more likely to affect call quality. Short noise level spikes are hard to avoid and usually have a negligible impact on call quality.
In practice, the individual circumstances of each case must be taken into account.