Call Quality Troubleshooting
use this guide to help diagnose and potentially resolve call quality issues
Quick Start: Most Common Issues and Resolutions
If you are experiencing call quality issues or dropped calls from a mobile or soft phone, try the following suggestions before continuing to troubleshooting.
- Check phone signal levels and attempt the call from a different location.
- If you are using a headset, try another configuration (Bluetooth vs USB).
- Perform a test call with an alternate phone number from a landline, VoIP service, or mobile phone (preferably one with a different service provider).
Diagnosis by Symptom
Call quality issues are tricky because the problem could lie with any number of systems involved in the call (your phone carrier, XANT phone carrier, your data network, Playbooks, etc). Using a mobile or soft phone adds complexity to the issue due to mobile network quality or internet bandwidth.
Self-diagnosis and resolution are often possible if you know what to look for. Use the following flow diagram to identify the issue by symptom, perform basic troubleshooting, and know what your next step should be.
Diagnosis by Discovery
Another way of diagnosing the issue is to troubleshoot individual components through a process of discovery questions. Use the list below to examine common points of failure. A customer’s IT group will need to be involved for a majority of this discovery. Information identified during discovery should be reported back to XANT Support if a case has been opened. XANT Support, XANT Telephony, and the customer’s IT group can then determine next steps.
| User’s Phone and Phone Number | ||
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| 1 | Verify agent’s phone number is accurate and compliant. (Menu > Settings > Phone) |
Phone number must be dialable on the Public Switch Telephone Network without needing to enter an extension.
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It must be e.164 compliant with correct country code.
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| 2 | Verify Call Forwarding has been disabled. |
Verify calls are not being forwarded from office phone to mobile phone to accommodate WFH. The Agent Phone Number setting should be updated with the mobile phone number. (Menu > Settings > Phone)
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Verify calls are not auto-forwarding to voicemail due to phone settings (applicable for both hard and soft phones).
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Verify calls are not auto-forwarding to voicemail due to PBX configuration. The amount of ring time before the call goes to voicemail may need to be extended.
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Verify Call forward on busy setting is disabled. This setting is usually available to PBX and softphone administrators.
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Attention mobile phone users: Verify Silence Unknown Callers setting is disabled. This new mobile phone setting will prevent calls from the XANT platform from being connected.
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| 3 | If mobile phone is being used to connect agent leg, verify signal strength is sufficient at user’s current location. |
If signal strength is low (two bars or less), resolve signal strength by re-positioning or working with mobile phone provider to boost signal.
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| 4 | Verify call quality is not caused by damaged, old, or poorly powered phone equipment. |
Test call quality with a different phone (preferably new or verified as working).
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Replace or fully charge all batteries, including headsets.
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| Internet and Network | ||
|---|---|---|
| 5 | If computer is using Wi-Fi network, connect to the router using a network cable. |
If call quality is a result of using a Wi-Fi network, users will need to work with their internal network/IT group to resolve.
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| 6 | If using a VPN, verify the VPN is not the root of the issue by testing outside the VPN. |
Users will need to work with their IT group to setup a testing session outside the VPN. (We have found that if VPN is the root cause, it will typically impact all users, not always, but often enough to annotate as a common symptom.)
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| 7 | If using VoIP or softphone, verify optimal configuration with Playbooks. |
Codec g711 works best with Playbooks platform. IT groups can discuss this with XANT Telephony team if they have questions.
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Verify there is no packet loss by pinging 8.8.8.8 while making an outbound dial impacted by poor call quality. Work with your IT group to identify if packet loss is an issue. If packet loss is discovered, IT groups will need to work with customer’s ISP to resolve.
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| 8 | Verify internet speed is not responsible for degraded call quality. |
Perform an internet speed test.
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Reporting a Call Quality Incident
Use the Report Call Quality feature in Playbooks any time that you have an obvious example of degraded phone call quality. You should report call quality during or immediately after each call that had an issue. Using the feature does not create a case; it flags specific phone calls (amongst hundred of thousands of calls made each day) so we can quickly identify them with our carriers. If you are experiencing persistent issues, you will need to contact XANT Support directly via chat or phone to open a support case.
A SINGLE call quality report does not provide enough data for XANT to effectively troubleshoot and resolve. Similar to how a doctor will evaluate a person’s medical history, what symptoms are present, the frequency of the symptoms, and current test results, the XANT Telephony team is looking for patterns. We understand it may be frustrating, and a little bit painful, to hear that we need more Call Quality Reports. As we work with our phone carriers to investigate your call quality issue we face similar frustrations because they only retain call data for 48 hours after the call due to the sheer volume of calls they process each hour.
To Log a Call Quality Incident
- Click END CALL.
- Click Report Call Quality.
- Select an option in the drop-down menu What was the problem?
- Leave a description of the issue.
- Click SEND.
Call Quality Incident Options
- Call Static – Crackling or light static.
- Call Choppy – Choppy voices, gaps in voice, syllables appear to be dropped or delayed in a start and stop fashion.
- Low Audio Volume – Fluctuating voices, the volume of voices increase and decrease in a wave fashion. If this occurs rapidly, it can be confused with some form of garbled voice.
- Delay in Audio – Large gaps in messages sending and receiving making it difficult to hold a normal conversation.
- Call Dropped Mid Call – If both the agent and customer were connected on a call, but the customer leg was dropped prematurely.
- Call Did Not Connect – If you were presented the “Call Disposition” options, but customer never connected, or you heard no system message.
- Delay After Click – Significant delay connecting the customer to the call after agent was connected.
Adding a Description
Call Quality Reports give you the option to write a description of the incident. When reporting a call quality incident, consider adding relevant information like the examples below to assist the XANT telephony team’s investigation:
- Where were you calling from/to? Call quality issues can be specific to location/carrier.
- Was the issue persistent during the entire call, or just partially?
- Was this a known cell phone number?
- If you disconnected from the call, then manually dialed the prospect back (without using the dialer panel) did the call quality persist?
When an incident is logged, the most recent call data is attached to that incident. This allows Playbooks to investigate, track phone carrier data, resolve in the background, or reach out to the impacted customers.
