While phones nowadays seem to be used for everything but calls, they remain a popular choice for customers to reach out. Despite the proliferation of omnichannel service options available, 59% of customers still rank the phone call as their top preference when they want support.
This means call quality is essential for delivering a positive—and fulfilling—customer experience. This also influences your customer satisfaction scores, customer loyalty and retention, and more.
So, when you’re assessing call quality, you need to consider your call center’s Mean Opinion Score (MOS) to understand how good (or bad) it really is. It can impact more than just the customer experience; it can affect your agents and your entire call center operation.
In this blog post, we’ll dive into what Mean Opinion Score is, what affects it, how impactful it can be to your contact center, and how you can improve it.
When it comes to call centers, the Mean Opinion Score (MOS) is a scoring system used to assess the quality of voice communications and, in turn, overall customer service standards. This generally includes the performance of telephony systems and the overall quality of interactions between customers and agents.
The most common rating scale for MOS is 1 to 5 Absolute Category Ranking (ACR):
But how is it measured? Usually, it’s measured in one of two ways:
Naturally, things are never as simple as you may think. Many factors come into play that can significantly impact your call center and your Mean Opinion Score. Understanding these key factors can help you make data-driven decisions to ensure high call quality standards in your contact center.
Even better, these factors can be fed into predictive models to help you estimate your MOS without needing human assistance (though you may still need some real eyes on the results to catch smaller details).
Network conditions play a massive role in the quality of your calls since most call centers operate with VoIP phone systems. Network issues can lead to disruptions, impacting the clarity and consistency of calls. Ensuring a powerful network infrastructure helps improve your call quality and MOS.
Latency, or delay, is the time it takes for voice data to travel from speakers to listeners. High latency means it takes longer for your agents to communicate with your customers, interrupting the natural flow of conversation—and your MOS. Keeping your latency as low as possible is ideal if you want smooth communication and a great customer experience.
When calls are in progress, the actual voice data is transferred in small chunks called packets. And when these packets are lost during transmission—whether through poor network connections, software issues, or bandwidth issues—conversations will end up muddled and hard to understand, often with gaps in the audio that negatively impact your MOS.
When packets aren’t lost but vary in travel times, the resulting audio can sound “jittery”, meaning it sounds choppy, and the quality of the audio drops. High jitter can lead to garbled and confusing audio, which isn’t great for customer interactions.
Finally, the codec your telephone system uses can significantly affect the quality of your calls. Audio codecs are how computers compress and decompress audio data, and they can vary in their features and effectiveness, including audio quality and bandwidth usage. Choosing the right one can make a massive difference in the quality of your calls and, as a result, your MOS.
A call center’s Mean Opinion Score tells a lot about its call quality and operations. While it’s not a perfect indicator of everything, MOS can give you a pretty good idea of what’s happening.
MOS is a direct metric of customer satisfaction (CSAT). If call quality is poor, your customers are more likely to be frustrated and dissatisfied, leading to potential loss of business, customer churn, or a decline in brand image.
A high MOS, on the other hand, may indicate smooth, clear communication, which enhances the overall customer experience and can boost loyalty and other service metrics too.
MOS influences agent performance. Clear and efficient communication allows agents to resolve issues quicker and more effectively, boosting their performance metrics. Whereas poor call quality opens up the potential for repetitive conversations and misunderstandings, potentially leading to demoralized or frustrated agents and reduced productivity.
Incorporating MOS into your QA process can be crucial for identifying and troubleshooting call quality issues. Using Mean Opinion Score data allows you to pinpoint problematic areas in your system or network and address them ASAP. This proactive approach helps ensure your contact center maintains its high standards, keeping both your customers and agents happy in the long run.
Ensuring your contact center has a high MOS is crucial for long-term success. A better Mean Opinion Score can significantly improve customer satisfaction, boost agent effectiveness, and enhance operational efficiency.
Here’s how to bump your call center’s MOS:
Improving your mean opinion score is like upgrading the foundation of your call center. Good call quality is the basis for a positive customer experience. When calls are crystal clear and uninterrupted, your customers feel heard and valued, which directly impacts your CSAT and Net Promoter Score (NPS).
Boosting your Mean Opinion Score can improve CSAT by ensuring every interaction meets quality standards. This makes for smoother conversations that also help your agents solve issues more efficiently, leading to more satisfied customers who are willing to leave positive reviews and tell others about your company, boosting your NPS score.
Integrating MOS with customer satisfaction metrics gives you a comprehensive view of your call center’s performance. Combining these data points allows you to pinpoint exactly where improvements are needed, ensuring a well-rounded approach to enhancing the customer experience.
Customer service is incredibly important, and so is the customer experience. However, technical issues that make it difficult for your agents to solve issues and connect with your customers can seriously impact that experience. Neglecting the Mean Opinion Score means you’re neglecting your customers, offering them a poor experience—and nobody wants that.
Adopting Scorebuddy’s quality assurance platform alongside efforts to improve your Mean Opinion Score can make a massive difference in your call center’s call quality.
With the addition of powerful QA features like AI Auto Scoring, customizable scorecards, integrated business intelligence, and more, you’ll be able to spot issues before they get out of hand and deliver the top-tier customer experience your customers deserve.
Sign up for a free demo of Scorebuddy today and evolve your customer experience.
