Have you ever been on a call when suddenly there is a drop in voice quality and you can’t understand what the other person is saying? Have you experienced unintended interruption when multiple people are talking at the same time on a conference call and they need to repeat themselves? Dropped calls, echo, delay and incomprehensible audio are some of the common issues that affect voice calls.

I have participated in a number of poor quality calls. To solve these issues, people may try to hang up and call again, change their location in an effort to improve signal or switch from one device to another. In the end, these attempts to improve call quality result in inconveniences and delays that impact employee and business productivity.

8x8 continues to innovate business communications with its array of productivity solutions, including high quality voice calls. 8x8 users enjoy an unparalleled audio quality experience even over sub-optimal network conditions. But, don’t just take our word for it. Tolly Group, a leading global provider of testing and third-party validation and certification services, tested the voice quality of four different services across a variety of normal and less-than-ideal conditions and discovered that:

“8x8 delivered the best voice quality in a majority of the test cases (scenarios, clients and impairment conditions). In cases where 8x8 did not have the highest quality scores, its results were generally in line with the other solutions” – Kevin Tolly, CEO and Founder, Tolly Group

These tests were conducted to analyze cloud communications VoIP calls exposed to various levels of jitter, packet loss and bufferbloat, replicating real use cases with the most popular clients: iOS and Android for mobile devices, also Mac and Windows for desktop users.

Below is an overview of 8x8’s results:

  • 8x8’s average score across all the scenarios was 3.5 or above (good to excellent)
  • 8x8 delivered the highest score in 17 of 24 scenarios. The only vendor without poor quality scores
  • In 7 of 24 scenarios where 8x8 is not the highest score, it is generally in line with the other solutions
  • 8x8 got the best score over bufferbloat tests

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Customers expect a high level of voice quality when selecting a cloud-based business communications system. Often these customers are migrating from legacy PBX or other on-premises systems to a cloud communications service. As more workers connect to more networks in more places than ever before, it has become critically important to utilize a cloud communications provider that invests in optimizing quality of service for real-time communications. This not only requires proprietary technologies, but also a deep understanding of the quality impairments that can affect users across different soft clients and connections (Ethernet from the office, consumer broadband and Wi-Fi, mobile networks using 3G/4G LTE, as well as, public networks).

Businesses looking at the cloud for their communication needs should prioritize voice quality if they are interested in improving customer satisfaction and employee productivity.

For more information, read the Tolly Group voice quality report.