By deploying business VoIP (voice over internet protocol), enterprises could not only be improving the state of their business phone systems today, they could also be paving the way for significant improvements in the quality of their voice telephony transmission and reception in the very near future.
Such is the view of Saddletree Research, whose analyst, Paul Stockford, has pointed to the high degree of compatibility between business VoIP systems and wideband audio – more commonly known as HD voice.
According to Stockford:
“With VoIP, you can do HD voice fairly easily, and VoIP has definitely gone mainstream now.”
As well as the immediate advantage of offering better quality voice signals, many commentators have also pointed to the ancillary benefits HD voice is expected to bring.
For call centres, where the efficient use of time spent with each potential customer can have a significant impact on the generation of sales, it is claimed that greater clarity on the part of the caller will lead to a much more effective interaction between the caller and the call centre operator.
In the same way, it is said that all businesses will benefit from the efficiency of being able to hear voicemail messages clearly on first listening – since HD voice has been shown to enhance pronunciation even among the softly spoken, enabling speech to stand out against any background noise and interference.
Commentators also refer to the major improvements HD voice can bring to audio conferencing, during which one or more participants can often experience difficulties in hearing others or in being heard.
HD voice is also said to hold greater potential for the effective operation of voice recognition technology during automatic call routing.
Incidentally, figures reveal that HD voice has already started to make some inroads in several European countries where business VoIP has become popular.
