Before You Begin:

This document list the best practices that are recommended to be followed for an optimum and a hiccup-free Agent Call Centre experience. The document is divided into two sections:

1. Best Practices for Telephony

2. Best Practices for Agent UI Portal

3. Bandwidth for Web calls and agent-UI

Telephony

For Agents Using Office Desk-Phones, Soft-Phones and WebCall

For Agents using office desk phones, digital phones, softphones or webRTC enabled web calls, it is advised to maintain the following:

Enable Auto Answer:

• Agent Phones should be in auto-answer mode enabling agents' phones should answer the call immediately on ringing without the agent having to click on the answer.

Ensure dedicated agent process:

• Agents should use the phone and be dedicated to the given process only. That is when logged into the agent-UI, the Agents should not be assigned to any other inbound or outbound queue for a different process.

Work From Anywhere with Mobile Number

Use 2G Mode

4G / LTE mode can often have 4x-5x failure rate for voice calls as compared to 2G mode. Please ensure your phone is set to 2G mode.

Do not use Dual SIM Mode

• If dual SIM mode exists, please have the agent switch off the dual SIM mode and work on single SIM mode only. Calls on second SIM can hamper the Agent productivity, and cause unwanted abandoned calls. It also helps to save battery.

• How To:

  • Remove the second SIM card.

  • In case of eSIM: Go to Settings > Mobile Networks > Disable second SIM.

Disable Call Waiting

• Enabling Call Waiting can cause unnecessary distraction to the Agent if there’s any external call landing on the agent. Agents often also mistakenly think multiple calls are landing from the system. This can cause Agent to put the customer on hold or get distracted impacting the customer experience and agent productivity.

• How To: This is usually available in Phone → Options → Call Waiting and Forwarding or Call Management.

Ensure Good Network Coverage

• Check that cell phone network reception or signal is Good or Excellent. If the signal strength is not good enough, expect voice issues, call drop and call connectivity issues. This can significantly impact agent productivity, customer experience, and high call abandonment.
  Please ensure you stay in “Excellent” or at max “Good” (<-85dBm) to ensure smooth operations. Anything higher than 85dBm can cause significant call drops or non-connectivity.

• The preferred network type needs to be 2G for better connectivity and for less signal fluctuation.

• How to:

  • Android: Settings App → About Phone → Status → SIM Status → Signal Strength

  • iOS: https://lifehacker.com/see-the-actual-signal-strength-on-your-iphone-or-androi-5929546

• If the signals are not good,

  • Move towards a sky-facing area, such as near a window with no obstacles.

  • Change the current SIM telecom operator with the one that has better coverage in your area

  • Use a signal booster device

Alternate Approaches

• Enable Jio Wifi calling.

• You can use a landline phone instead of a mobile phone.

Desktop Agent-UI

The work from the Home scenario is getting more prevalent these days. There are multiple ways agents can connect and receive calls. They can receive calls through SIP channels (which requires compliance with OSP guidelines) and they can receive calls directly on their mobile phone numbers (two-way call legs) or web call.

This page focuses on the latter, using two-way call legs and conferencing on the PBX to manage the second leg of the call. At most locations, call center agents will use their own or company-provided mobile phones. In this section, we suggest some best practices that should be used when agents are using mobile phones to receive calls.

Ensure Minimum System Requirements:

1. Google Chrome v90+

2. Stable 1.6 Mbps Internet Speed

3. (Optional) Mobile Phone with <85 dBm Signal Strength or Landline

Ensure Good Internet Speed

• Ensure that you have a Good & Consistent Internet speed of 200 KBps.

• To Check:

  • Go to fast.com and ensure you’re getting (200*8) 1.6 Mbps speed.

  • Click on more details to check latency. Ensure latency is less than 300 ms either way.

• How to Improve:

  • Please check if any service is taking background bandwidth, especially OS updates.

  • Use LAN to connect Internet services with your desktop

  • Upgrade for the better internet plan

How to go on a Break or Logout:

• If you would like to go on a break and not receive any further calls, you can enable the associated break while your current call is in progress.

• By doing so, your break will be enabled after the call is over, and you’ll not receive any further calls after your current call is over.

• After you have come back from your break, you can disable the break and start receiving calls again.

• If you do not want to receive any further calls, please log out using the “Logout” button at the top right-hand corner.

Using another system with Phonon Agent UI

Are you using another system, such as a CRM or LMS system on which you’ll be spending more than 5 mins (i.e. not visiting the Phonon Central Agent UI tab)? If not, please skip this part. If yes, there’s a chance that the tab will be suspended in the background during which the agent is considered offline (i.e. login hours and calls stops). It can be circumvented by making a few configurations:

Bandwidth for Web call and agent-UI

call quality is influenced by several factors, including device software and hardware and the network a device is connected to. Here we explore the key factors that influence call quality and recommendations for improving call quality.

Agent login from Office

Agent login from office using web call or softphone then it should have 150 kb/Second dedicated for the agent and there should be dedicated ILL connection to avoid the bandwidth related issues.

Agent login from home

Agent login from office using web call or softphone then it should have 150 kb/Second dedicated for the agent and there should be having proper network bandwidth using Broadbank or 4G/LTE enabled internet connection on mobile internet. And the signal strength can be checked using apps like “network cell info lite“ which will give you the network strength.

Signal strength can be checked under Ensure Good Network Coverage section.

https://phonon.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/PS/pages/341475877/Best+Practices+for+Agent+Connect#Ensure-Good-Network-Coverage

Network Characteristics

The network the device runs on has a big influence on call quality thanks to factors such as jitter and latency.

Jitter and Latency

VoIP calls involve the transmission of a continuous train of voice data packets. If the network is congested, some of the first packets sent may reach a recipient later than other packets. This out-of-order receipt of packets, known as jitter, can result in the audio sounding jumbled or robotic. Jitter is measured in milliseconds of delay, and jitter values higher than 30 milliseconds on web calls can lead to poor audio quality. High network congestion can also lead to packet loss, resulting in chunks of audio never reaching the intended recipient.

Latency, in the context of web calls, is the spoken-to-heard delay in the transmission of audio. The major contributing factor to VoIP latency is the delay incurred in the transmission of voice packets from origin to destination. When this network latency is more than 300 milliseconds of the round-trip time, call participants can experience audio lag.

Phonon Recommends

To minimize network and device issues and improve call quality, Plivo recommends:

• Using a high-bandwidth fiber connection from a reputed internet provider. Dedicated business internet connections generally come with guaranteed SLAs on bandwidth and latency.

• Use a physical Ethernet connection instead of Wi-Fi when possible.

• If using Wi-Fi, limit the number of devices connected on the same channel.

• Using high-quality Wi-Fi routers built for enterprises or real-time gaming. Look for routers that come with advanced QoS features.

• Auditing your network firewall and NAT settings to check for transmission delays due to improper configuration.

• Avoid large data transfers on the Wi-Fi network during calls.

• Limiting bandwidth per connected device to ensure an even allocation of total available bandwidth.

• Avoid calls over cellular data connections (4G and older) as they are not optimized for low-latency traffic during the login.

• Ensuring uplink and downlink bandwidth availability of at least 50Kbps for voice transmission.

• If operating in a low-bandwidth environment, capping the bandwidth to be consumed on the call using the maxAverageBitrate configuration parameter of the Browser SDK.

Device Characteristics

Certain software and hardware device characteristics have a direct impact on VoIP call quality.

Device Hardware

While most modern PC and smartphone devices are more than capable of handling VoIP calls, incompatibilities between hardware components such as network drivers, audio cards, and other firmware components can result in unexpected issues with media handling.

Attempting to reproduce issues on other devices should be a key step in your debugging process.

The Audio Input and Output Device

Phonon recommends using quality headsets for browser-based calls.

Headsets minimize echo by providing acoustic isolation between the speaker and the microphone. High-quality VoIP headsets with noise-canceling features can greatly enhance call quality in noisy environments by eliminating background sounds.

Wired headsets generally offer more stable sound quality than wireless or Bluetooth headsets. Wireless headsets are more prone to adapter and driver configuration issues, which can lead to static or white noise on calls. We recommend testing with a different headset, or with a built-in mic and speaker, when troubleshooting audio quality issues.

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