Whether it’s a screaming baby, a delivery driver unexpectedly ringing the doorbell or even muffled sounds from the room next door where your partner – now also working from home – is taking a Zoom call, noise while working remotely is something that has become part of everyday life while working remotely. In fact, just last week I was on a call with a customer when the refuse collection happened (some six hours late… and extremely loud right outside my front door). I shut the window immediately but the clatter and crash of bottles (we’re a neighbourhood that enjoys the odd glass of wine or two!) and despite a grovelling apology to the person I was on the call with, he couldn’t help but chuckle, which made me chuffed I managed to provide him with some form of light entertainment. Why didn’t he mind, I pondered after our chat on Microsoft Teams. Well, the truth is we all find it somewhat humbling when noise – or unexpected chaos in the house – happens. It’s a reminder we’re only human and we’re all in the same boat when it comes to how we’re reacting (and adapting) our working lives to the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic, and that despite our best efforts, we simply can’t control the surrounding noise around us – until now.
I sat down for a virtual chat with a US-based company called Krisp, makers of an AI-powered app that removes background noise & echo from meetings leaving only human voice. Their COO Robert Schoenfield gave me a demo of how the app works and I was literally blown away by it after he set up the shrill noise of what sounded like the New York subway combined with the London Underground with the added mix of gridlock on the M25, sounding horns and screaming voices included. At the click of a button he stopped all that surrounding noise and all I could hear was the calm of his voice taking me through the app. From the perspective of somebody like myself who is very sensitive to noise, it instilled a calm in me I’ve not experienced for months of working from home.
It also got me thinking about noise in hybrid working environments and how this feature could be used in contact centres too. One thing that struck me is that the traditional contact centre was full of noise. I’ve lost count of the amount of times I’ve called big companies and battled to hear the live agent speaking to me though the wave of background chatter. Did noise controlling solutions exist say, five or ten years ago? Either way, Krisp’s app is a prime example of something positive that has come out of the pandemic – and how it’s pushing us to think outside the box!
