Amplifiers play a major roll in headset sound quality. You should look for a headset amplifier with a line quieting feature, which reduces telephone line noise and thus increases sound clarity. To Protect the headset user against sudden loud noises, like fax signals, automatic gain control is essential and should be built in as a standard feature.

Eliminating Background Noise
Headsets must also be evaluated by how well the agent and caller can hear in a noisy work environment. In all call centers--but noisier ones in particular--microphones with noise-canceling capabilities are essential. A noise-canceling (NC) microphone will eliminate ambient room noise and only transmit the voice of the headset user.

When the agent wears a headset that nullifies distracting background noise (some microphones can cancel up to 95% of ambient room noise), the caller hears only the sound of the agent's voice. This is instrumental in conveying a highly professional corporate image to customers. Further, in most selling environments, the sales agent requires time to engage the customer; this is difficult when the customer hears and is distracted by other conversations going on in the call center.

In some environments, particularly those with exceptionally high levels of ambient noise, binaural (two speaker) headsets are needed. However, in situations where employees must hear what's going on in the room around them, a monaural (one speaker) headset may be preferred. While sound quality is always critical, it is even more critical with monaural headsets, where only one speaker is providing sound to a user.

Almost as important as what customers hear is what they do not hear, so make sure that your headsets offer and easily accessible silent mute feature, that will eliminate sneezes, coughs and other distracting user sounds.

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