The call quality between an Agent and Customer is highly dependent on the environment the call is being conducted on.
There are a few rules of thumb you should follow to ensure the optimal voice quality between your Customers and Agent, namely:
- Wired internet connection (see Network Requirements)
- High-quality headset (see Hardware Requirements)
- Modern, well-equipped PC with sufficient RAM with adequate free memory available (see Hardware Requirements)
- Gladly-supported browser (see Hardware Requirements)
Jitter, latency, and packet loss can be the biggest contributors to voice quality issues in any network. Consider the measures below to help protect against these issues.
Jitter #
Jitter is when packets don’t arrive in the same order they were sent. This can cause choppy audio.
To minimize jitter, we recommend:
- Using fixed ethernet, not WiFi, wherever possible
- Reducing packet conflicts on WiFi by reducing the number of devices operating on the same channel
- Avoiding large data file transfers going over the same WiFi environment concurrently with voice
- Avoid bufferbloat. Bufferbloat occurs when your router is unable to transmit all the packets required, and builds up too large a queue. This queuing causes large latency and bursts of jitter. Since voice is a real-time channel, this can be disruptive to a call experience
- Ensuring your router is configured with a low buffer size. The perceived buffer size as determined by this tool should be around 100ms or less
If you followed all the instructions above but continue to have jitter-related impact on your voice quality, you may consider configuring your router with QoS rules to prioritize traffic on the above media UDP ports. Given the large range of UDP ports you should only do this with prior consideration to what other traffic may be flowing in that port range.
Latency #
Latency is the time it takes the RTP (media) packets to traverse the network. Too much latency can result in callers inadvertently speaking over each other.
Callers typically start to notice the effect of latency once it breaches 250ms for a “mouth-to-ear” trip. The experience is untenable once it goes over 600ms.
Note that a small amount of latency will always exist, but the objective is to keep it below 250ms.
To minimize latency, we recommend:
- Upgrading your internet connectivity if possible. Lower bandwidth fixed internet connections can often suffer from a higher latency
- Not using LTE (mobile 4G Data) as they can often have high latency
