Articles

Call Centers are noisy places. No matter how carefully you position the workstations, or how good your audio and call equipment is there will be office noise to deal with, noise to plan around, and noise to eliminate. Furthermore, there is always the issue of sensitivity in conversation to deal with. If people call into a Call Center and sense background noise and chatter they are more apt to regard the Center as a fly-by-night operation and potential fraud risk. Not only ergonomics but psychology must rule the construction of a good Call Center.

If your Call Center deals with any kind of customer service, you will be open to issues of call sensitivity. Offices everywhere that have customer service arms have to take this into consideration, whether the Call Center is off the campus of the company or in-house. This is also the case for military and government operations, corporate meeting areas in private corporations, or for contractors with clearances. Anywhere you deal with personal information you are open to risk.

Sound travels in waves, and can pass through almost any surface - doors, windows, walls, ducts, etc. Although very sophisticated methods of masking can preserve privacy, someone using a sophisticated eavesdropping device may still succeed at eavesdropping.

Conventional acoustic treatment techniques include the creation of rooms that have high sound attenuation. This means diminishing the intensity of the sound that is traveling through a medium and is achieved via absorption, spreading, or scattering the sound. Many organizations don't have money available for high-class attenuation and thus look to another option: sound masking.

Sound masking essentially fills in the sound spectrum, making speech less intelligible in a given space. Often confused with noise cancellation, sound masking does not actually alter a sound wave's frequency. Instead, it simply covers it up. This method of ensuring acoustic privacy is usually the most effective in terms of return on investment.

The advantage for the Call Center is not only call confidentiality, but lack of equipment intrusiveness. Sound masking, when installed correctly, helps to cut costs for cubicle walls, yet greatly enhances the work setting. Furthermore, it minimizes the chance of a client's eavesdropping on another client's personal information when a representative recites it back.

Masking is a technique that can greatly improve your call center. To start with, it will make your employees happier and healthier, by eliminating stressful background noise. Your employees will be able to relax in a workplace that uses masking, and they'll perform better in the absence of extra noise. To benefit your workers and clients, you'll want to consider sound masking.

Call Centers can have a lot of office noise. If people call into a Call Center and sense or notice background noise and chatter they are more apt to regard the Center as a fly-by-night operation and potential fraud risk. If your Call Center deals with any kind of customer service, you will be open to issues of call sensitivity. Sound masking makes it tougher to identify speech by filling in spaces in the sound spectrum, and doesn't change the frequency of sound waves. White noise can enhance the overall environment.