Exceptional Softphone Voice Quality Is Critical for Hybrid Work

In our current ‘work from anywhere world,’ a good chunk of the population has come to rely on softphones to stay connected. Recently we explained that proactive performance monitoring is a no-brainer in sophisticated and high-performance unified communications environments. This also means delivering the best Voice Quality (VQ) possible has never been more critical.

For Mitel Partners or IT teams, guessing the VQ user experience on a softphone can be like flying in the dark. You think it is ok, but do you know how users are experiencing the VQ? If a user complains about VQ, can you quickly determine why? Can you measure the severity and impact of that poor quality?

Here is why delivering good VQ in a hybrid work world can be difficult.

1. Inconsistent Technology

With some employees working from home and others in the office, there can be inconsistencies in the technology used for communication, including several different platforms and devices. Add softphones to the mix, which can quickly get complicated as gaining visibility into your needed performance takes much work.

2. Connectivity Issues

Remote workers may experience connectivity issues due to poor internet connections, leading to delays or dropped calls, which can affect the quality of the call. Finding workarounds to poor performance is very common and can include dropping videos, not sharing, and even resorting to a cell phone to complete a call. It could result in your organization offering even a lower communication experience to team members and customers than any user could get in mass-consumer communication solutions.

3. Lack of Environmental Control

When employees are in different locations, it can be challenging to control their working environment. For example, they may need access to high-quality microphones or headsets in certain situations. In other cases, the environment can be a challenge, from a noisy open workplace to parents working from home or a remote worker trying to take a meeting in a crowded coffee shop.

These factors can make delivering good VQ in a hybrid work world challenging. The consequence of all these issues is a poorer interaction and an opportunity lost to close a ticket or make a deal properly. VQ is not only about user satisfaction or comfort but also about user productivity and business efficiency and success. However, you can take steps to mitigate these challenges and ensure that the softphone VQ experience is a good one.

Mitel Performance Analytics

Mitel Performance Analytics (MPA) is a fault and performance management solution that proactively monitors and manages your entire network. Its deep analytics can help answer any question that you might have about overall performance and VQ. It can also quickly identify VQ and network quality concerns before business-affecting outages arise. When employees experience downtime, productivity plummets, and IT teams scramble, wasting valuable resources to determine the root cause of an issue.

Extended VQ Monitoring for Quick Troubleshooting

MPA includes deep VQ cause visualization capabilities that include VQ correlation graphs that quickly point you toward the root cause of a problem, allowing you to spot trends. Detailed reports help quickly identify and assess VQ. Reports demonstrate performance and help with forecasting, planning, and load balancing. MPA also delivers detailed information that can be easily shared with key stakeholders, including in-depth reporting for softphone VQ in MPA Plus.

MPA Plus ensures that mobile and desktop MiCollab softphones VQ are captured in MPA. This data is fully integrated into the existing MPA VQ analysis and reports. MiCollab Mobile Clients (Android, iOS) and MiCollab Desktop Client (Windows or MAC) are supported.

MPA includes VQ cause visualization trunk traffic and MiCollab audio, web, and video (AWV) utilization reports to beef up capacity for better performance. These reports are easily downloaded and shared, and you can also see usage reports for AWV.

See the difference MPA’s deep VQ visualization can make when delivering the best VQ experience for softphones.