One of my biggest personal pet peeves with dealing with call centers is the amount of background noise that is typically heard. OK...I admit it: I am easily distracted sometimes. Trying to focus on what an agent is telling me when I can hear the conversations of other agents in the background is unsettling. Aside from simple distraction, it gives me the impression that my call is just one call among millions, and I am just a grain of sand on the beach, so to speak. While at a deep intellectual level I may KNOW this, a good call center agent should be able to make each customer forget that there are millions of other customers who are at least as important as he/she is, and feel like an individual who is of value to the company. secondly, call center background noise provides a mental image of old-style "boiler room" call centers: hundreds of agents crammed elbowby-elbow, taking calls while desperately wishing they could get another job...any job. Not exactly a mental image that screams "Quality." If a company cuts quality corners in its call center, where else does it cut corners? In its product safety standards? Inspections? Returns policies? Customer data security?

While call centers may no longer resemble the boiler rooms of the old days, no call center can afford to house agents in their own individual offices, or give each agent 500 square feet of floor space to keep background noise minimized. It behooves call centers, therefore, to boost the sound quality of agents' phone calls where it is economically and technologically feasible to do so: in the agents' headsets.

Aside from the other benefits we've discussed in previous issues related to the benefits of quality headsets (eliminating the need for agents and customers to repeat diemselves, the elimination of errors in taking down customer information, reducing agent frustration, reducing breakage and returns), noise-cancelling features are key even for small call centers. As the factors that can lead to decreased call quality and poor customer satisfaction rise: IP telephony, heavy use of mobile and cordless phones, a very mobile consumer society that seldom chooses to call into call centers from quiet home environments and heavily accented agents in offshore call centers, it's imperative that the factor that CAN be controlled - the quality of the headset - fill that breach.