Quick-serve restaurants waste time, stock, and money when inaccurate orders are taken, and this damages valuable customer relationships.
Luckily, tests by Orfield Laboratories Inc that reveals Quail Digital’s drive thru communication system offers superior acoustic quality.
A renowned specialist acoustic testing laboratory, Orfield was commissioned by Quail Digital to provide independent data concerning the sound quality of the new Q-Pro5 all-in-one drive thru headset system, as it is rolled out across North America.
The tests were designed to measure intelligibility at the speaker post in a range of environments using the speech transmission index (STI).
The STI is an internationally accepted rating against IEC standard 60268-16, and was used to measure signal to noise ratio at the speaker post and the impulse response on the entire system.
The technical data report from Orfield Laboratories Inc., states: “The STI reading with noise reduction activated was in the ‘good’ and ‘excellent’ range at varying levels of inbound noise at the speaker post. On the factory setting, the noise reduction circuit gave an improvement in inbound scores of 11 percent at 65dBA car noise and 70 dBA broadband noise. The advantages of noise reduction techniques used in the inbound circuits of the system are evident in the results.”
The Quail Digital system uses a duplex platform combined with noise and echo cancelling technology to maximize sound quality for both customer and order-taker.
“To make sure you hear all of the customer’s order, including any changes they might make, the system needs to be fully duplex, so that both parties can hear at all times,” says Tom Downes, CEO of Quail Digital.
“Old systems were simplex, [push-to-talk], which meant you cut off the other person when you spoke. This increased mistakes because, if the customer changed their order while the order taker was speaking, the changes wouldn’t be heard.
“However, a drawback with the duplex system is that if the microphone at the speaker post remains open all the time it picks up traffic and weather noise too, hampering clarity of the customer’s voice. To reduce background noise, our noise cancelling technology reads and removes all the unwanted constant noise, leaving the customers voice as stand out as it can be.
In addition, our echo cancelling technology allows a microphone and speaker to be open all the time without getting the feedback which would render the system unusable.”
Quail Digital is the only system on the market to be full duplex under all conditions. Other systems retreat to half duplex in conditions where sound levels are too intrusive, so it’s only full duplex one way while the other is simplex.
While this reduces inbound constant noise level and therefore increases voice clarity, it reduces the system’s effectiveness.
“We want potential customers to have complete confidence in our system so we were delighted to submit the Q-Pro5 to scrutiny by this renowned and respected research organization,” Downes says.
“Maximizing throughput of the drive thru is a KPI for all operators, therefore intelligibility of the communications coming from the customer through the microphone and back again from the order taker is of paramount importance.
“Clear communications saves time and reduces waste resulting from ordering mistakes and that represents real cost savings for operators. It also improves the customer experience, which encourages customer loyalty and enhances the operator’s reputation.
