Testing voice agents on accents and noisy lines
Test whether your agent hears every caller right, on the kind of phone line they really ring from.
The problem
“It’s the flat above the chippy, number 4B.”
A demo on a clean laptop microphone hides the hard part. Real calls arrive at phone quality, with regional accents and a radio or traffic behind them, and the details that matter most are the easiest to mishear.
What goes wrong
Three ways this fails once an agent is taking real calls. Each exchange is made up.
- 1
A detail misheard
A letter becomes a number, and the agent acts on it without checking.
Caller
It’s flat 4B.
Agent
Thanks. I’ve booked the visit for flat 48.
- 2
Asked again and again
The agent cannot catch an answer and repeats the same question in the same words.
Agent
Sorry, could you repeat your postcode?
Caller
L8 2TJ.
Agent
Sorry, could you repeat your postcode?
- 3
Noise taken as speech
A bus, a radio or a cough makes the agent stop, or answer something no one said.
A bus passes behind the caller.
Agent
Sorry, I didn’t catch that. Did you want to cancel?
How RingTru tests it
We send simulated callers built to set off each failure, on phone-quality audio, many times over.
Strong regional accent
Accents from across the UK and beyond, at phone quality, scored group by group.
“It’s the flat above the chippy, number 4B.”
Noisy line
Traffic, a kitchen or a radio, set from mild to nearly drowned out.
“Sorry, I’m by the road, can you say that again?”
Spells it out
Postcodes, surnames and references, with letters that sound alike and a correction.
“L8, that’s L for Lima, 2TJ.”
What the judge checks
Every call is scored against written rules. These are a starting set, and you can add your own. Each rule gets a pass or a fail, and every fail quotes the line that decided it.
How the judges workRules for this kind of call
- 1Every name, number and postcode is captured exactly, or read back and corrected.
- 2Key details are read back, and a correction is accepted.
- 3After one miss the agent changes approach, such as offering to spell, and does not repeat itself word for word.
- 4Background noise does not make the agent stop or answer something not said.
- 5The task ends correctly for every accent group, reported group by group.
What the finding looks like
A made-up agent and made-up calls, laid out the way your report shows them.
00:52CallerIt’s the flat above the chippy, number 4B.
00:55AgentThanks. That’s flat 48, is that right?
00:57CallerNo, 4B. B for Bravo.
01:01AgentLovely, the assessor will come to flat 48.
Judge: The caller corrected the flat number to 4B. The booking kept 48.
Fix: After a correction, read the detail back letter by letter and wait for a yes before booking.
Read more
Guides on how this fails and how to test it yourself.
Hear your agent the way your callers do.
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- test calls
- 506
- passed
- 96.8%
- median reply
- 0.94 s
Holds the new day when a caller changes their mind.