Jitter disrupts voice calls in subtle but costly ways. Learn what causes it, how it affects CX and agent performance, and why it matters more than most teams realise.
Most voice calls in the contact center connect without issue, however, that doesn’t mean the experience is always working as intended. When audio cuts in and out or when agents and customers talk over each other, it's often caused by Jitter. These are small, inconsistent delays in how voice packets arrive across the network.
Jitter affects how clearly people can communicate, how long it takes to resolve an issue, and how customers perceive the professionalism of the interaction. Over time, that can add up to increased handle times, repeat contacts, and lower customer satisfaction and trust. These problems often remain invisible unless you are measuring the right things.
CCaaS platforms like Amazon Connect, Twilio, and Genesys Cloud use WebRTC to handle real-time voice in the browser. This works by sending audio as small chunks of data in rapid succession. Jitter is the variation in how evenly the data arrives. When the timing is consistent, conversations feel clear and natural however, when it fluctuates, voices can become clipped, delayed, or distorted.
To the customer or agent, this might sound like someone talking over them, words being cut off, or pauses that break the flow of conversation. It increases the effort required to communicate and understand each other, even when the call itself hasn’t technically dropped.
When you speak on a voice call, your voice isn’t transmitted as one continuous stream. Instead, it’s broken up into small pieces of data called packets. Each packet carries a tiny part of the conversation, just a few milliseconds of audio.
These packets are sent over the internet from one person to another, where they are reassembled and played back in the correct order, almost instantly. If everything goes smoothly, it sounds like a natural conversation. However, if a call is affected by jitter, packets can be delayed, arrive out of order, or go missing (dropped), the audio can become choppy, robotic, or hard to understand.
Jitter is often caused by inconsistent network or device performance. Here are some of the most common contributors:
Network congestion
Heavy traffic on the network, especially during peak periods, can delay voice packets. This is particularly common in home networks or sites without bandwidth controls.
Unstable Wi-Fi connections
Agents connected over Wi-Fi are more prone to jitter due to interference, signal drops, or congestion on local wireless networks. Wired connections are generally more reliable for real-time voice traffic.
Poor last-mile performance
The segment between the agent’s ISP and their device, the “last mile”, is often the least controlled and most variable. High latency, packet loss, or intermittent ISP performance can all introduce jitter.
High CPU or device load
When an agent’s computer is under heavy CPU or memory load, it can struggle to process audio streams in real-time. This can delay packet handling locally, even when the network is functioning well.
Routing complexity in cloud environments
Voice traffic in platforms like Amazon Connect, Twilio, or Genesys may traverse multiple network hops and regions. Every time a packet moves from one router or switch to another on its way to its destination, that’s a hop. The more hops there are, the more devices the packet has to pass through and each one introduces a chance for delay, jitter, or packet loss.
Lack of Quality of Service (QoS) policies
Without QoS, voice packets may not be prioritised over bulk data traffic. File downloads, software updates, or video streaming on the same network can disrupt the timing of audio packets.
Hardware and endpoint issues
Outdated firmware, poorly configured audio devices, or low-performance machines can all affect the timing of packet processing, contributing to jitter even in otherwise stable environments.
As I touched on earlier, even when a voice call is technically connected, jitter can make it hard to communicate clearly. It introduces small, inconsistent delays in how voice packets arrive and are processed, often leading to audio that feels disjointed, robotic, or difficult to follow.
Choppy or broken speech
Packets may arrive too late to be played or are dropped entirely. This results in missing syllables, clipped words, or partial sentences.
Example: “I can h… you with th…” instead of “I can help you with that.”
Overlapping voices
Due to audio playback delays, customers and agents may unintentionally overlap (speak over) in their conversations. The natural rhythm of conversation is disrupted.
Robotic or metallic tone
When jitter buffers try to compensate for inconsistent timing, voices may sound synthetic or distorted due to compression or stretching of packet data.
Repeated or echoed fragments
Late-arriving packets that still get played can cause duplication of words or syllables.
Example: “I’ll-I’ll look into that now.”
Out-of-order audio,
If packets are processed in the wrong order (For example, a packet carrying syllable #3 might arrive before packet #2), you can experience noticeable audio glitches like swapped syllables or unnatural transitions.
Most CCaaS platforms (including Amazon Connect, Genesys Cloud, and Twilio) use a jitter buffer to temporarily store incoming packets and re-sequence them before playback. This helps smooth out minor variations in arrival time.
However, if jitter exceeds the buffer’s configured threshold or if the buffer is misconfigured, it can’t correct the disorder. In those cases, the issues described above become audible.
When a customer reaches out for help or support, they expect a smooth, professional experience. Jitter undermines that by making it harder for them to follow what the agent is saying or to communicate their own needs clearly.
This results in unnecessary friction. Customers may need to repeat themselves or ask for clarification, which can lead to a loss of confidence that their issue is being properly understood. Even if the agent resolves the problem, the interaction still feels subpar. Over time, this degrades customer satisfaction and trust in the brand.
Customer side jitter can’t be controlled however it does have have an impact on Agents. Agents are trained to listen, understand, and solve problems efficiently. Jitter gets in the way of all three. It increases the mental load required to follow the conversation and forces agents to ask for clarification or make educated guesses about what was said.
This slows down calls, introduces the risk of miscommunication, and puts pressure on agents who are already working in a high-demand environment. It also skews performance metrics. Handle time increases, CSAT may drop, and quality scores can suffer, none of which reflect the agent’s actual skill or effort.
If the agent side of the call experiences jitter then quality monitoring scores and coaching decisions can become inaccurate when they’re based on technical problems rather than agent behavior. This is particularly true when a company uses automated quality assurance/quality monitoring (QA) to assess calls. This is because automated QA uses voice to text transcription and then analyses the text. When jitter is a factor, transcriptions can become inaccurate, which can impact the agents quality score.
Over time, persistent voice quality issues (like jitter) can lead to agent fatigue, coaching challenges or inaccuracy, increased frustration and ultimately higher attrition.
Jitter doesn’t always show up directly in reports, but its effects do. Jitter can distort the metrics you rely on most: handle time, CSAT, FCR, and conversion rates
Poor call quality drives repeat contacts and increases operational costs. It affects conversion and upsell rates by weakening the clarity and confidence of conversations. It also erodes customer and agent satisfaction, even when your systems and processes are functioning as designed.
Because jitter can be transient and localised, it is hard to detect and diagnose without real-time observability across networks, agents, and customer endpoints.
Jitter is an audible symptom (not the cause) of larger underlying problems. It can be the manifestation of compounding factors such as agent CPU load, network congestion, VPN routing, or VDI performance. Jitter alone is simply a network metric. It only becomes meaningful when you connect it to agent behavior or customer sentiment.
By correlating jitter with experience outcomes, you can begin to determine whether it’s an isolated issue affecting a single agent or a widespread problem impacting many. You can also investigate whether the root cause lies with a specific geography, ISP, or operational setup. This makes jitter an useful operational signal to guide where to focus investigation and remediation.
Plenty of tools measure jitter, but the real value comes from putting it in context, understanding it as the early warning sign of deeper issues that directly affect agent performance and customer experience.
You do not need a complete outage or a mountain of complaints to have a voice quality problem. Jitter often affects just enough calls to create a measurable drag on performance.
With CX Observability in place, you can detect it early, understand its impact, and take targeted action. That leads to faster calls, clearer conversations, and more confident agents.
Want to see how jitter is affecting your contact center?
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