Supplier Survey: Headsets

By Brendan B. Read
Senior Contributing Editor, Customer Interaction Solutions

This month’s Supplier Survey is focusing on headsets. Here are the highlights of their responses to questions posed on market, product, and vendor trends, and on buying advice. The full texts will appear on TMCnet.com.

Here are the questions covered here:
1. What top trends do you see happening in both contact centers and in your industry and what is driving these trends? For example are companies delaying replacing and upgrading headsets? What is their typical lifespan and how much if any are these being lengthened?

2. What new products, services, and/or enhancements to your existing solutions have you developed, or perhaps are currently working on in response to these issues, and how will they help contact centers improve their performance?

3. Where does your firm fit in your marketplace? What are your core differentiators? How would you describe your view of the future evolution of the company? Have you recently or do you plan to enter new markets and if which ones, why, and through what means?

4. Discuss the state of technology with headsets. For exampled are the days of wired sets numbered and if so why?

5. There are new mobile applications that give agents the same connectivity: ACD routing, access to applications on their wireless devices as being at their desks. These solutions are being aimed at higher-end staff, like level 3 support reps and supervisors. What impact will these have on traditional desktop/headset environments and on the demand for wireless headsets?

6. What shape do you see contact centers and your industry going forward? Where are the growth markets? What do you see happening post-downturn? GN Netcom (www.gnnetcom.com) David Grazio, Director of Channel Marketing, CC&O We are seeing:

• More integration with other communication devices and solutions through initiatives like unified communications to improve worker efficiency and productivity across the organization

• Minimize costs and increase ROI for current communication solutions to delay or postpone new headset purchases until economic conditions improve to justify new investments

• More employees interested in experiencing hands free communication by transitioning seamlessly between devices both within and outside of the office (desk phone, soft phone, cell, PDA) We are working on:

• New high end corded solutions being introduced that fit within ‘advanced superior’ category of headsets developed to improve ROI by providing users with better audio performance, comfort features, and design enhancements to withstand contact center environments

• Enabling customers to delay purchase of replacement headsets by providing a 3 year warranty combined with superior components/materials that allow users to hear better and thus be able to work more efficiently in contact center environments. This gives customers better investment protection with three years of parts and labor coverage standard combined with our product support

• New ‘advanced superior’ wireless headsets that enable users to experience the ultimate in hands free communications with maximum talk time, roaming distance, user friendly interface and controls, along with multiple device support ‘out of the box’ to ensure compatibility and minimize downtime for business calls and discussions

We are an industry leader within the contact center marketplace providing proven wired headset solutions that enable customers to hear better, choose from multiple wearing style options to maximize comfort, and provide award-winning performance, quality and reliability with each connection.

Key differentiators include: Jabra (News - Alert) product quality and reliability with our rigorous product testing procedures, advanced performance to provide maximum talk time, durability to withstand the toughest of call center environments, industry leading product support resulting in guaranteed customer satisfaction, along with proven performance via recognition and validation through industry awards and customer success stories

There is more emphasis and focus on enhancements in the areas of voice clarity with our ultra noise cancelling microphone, headset durability, comfort, and compatibility through our strategic alliances with Microsoft (News - Alert), Cisco, IBM, Avaya, and Polycom. Also the introduction of multiuse headsets such as the M5390 which allow users to connect seamlessly to multiple devices such as cell phone, desk or soft phone, and PC (USB).

There is also the need for advanced wired headsets that are designed to withstand rigorous call center environments, deliver maximum comfort and talk time, provide a secure environment for conversations, compatibility to support existing communication systems, and reduce the total cost of ownership. This last point is very critical given high employee turnover in contact centers.

For mobile applications the demand for wireless and multiuse headsets will increase as users are looking for solutions that enable them to seamlessly communicate back and forth between devices while maintaining acceptable service level agreements for their customers. For wired headsets customers will continue to leverage these solutions for users that require more durability and performance within a secure environment with noise cancelling capabilities given sound restrictions.

For the contact center marketplace we’re seeing an increase in the number of agent positions overall for the medium-large contact centers as more companies are outsourcing their customer service teams to manage service level agreements and provide a positive user experience each time.

The largest capital expenditures for technology purchases are expected in the telecommunications sector along with financial services industry covering credit unions, banking, and stock market/broker institutions. The goal is achieving maximum penetration within the contact center marketplace so growth opportunities will be limited to replacement of existing wired headsets with unified communications (UC)/soft phone compatible headsets. The primary drivers for new headset purchases will revolve around benefits of multitasking, mobility, comfort, growth of soft phones and UC clients, migration to IP telephony systems within contact centers.

Plantronics (News - Alert) (www.plantronics.com)
Nicholas Eisner, Global Product Manager, Corded Professional Products

The main focus has become doing more with less - making the most of every customer contact, retaining agents, and improving customer satisfaction and retention. We are seeing little decline in contact center sales compared to other more discretionary purchases, customer contact being the mission-critical customer touch vehicle for most companies. Replacement purchases are being deferred as much as is operationally tenable, and therein our customers enjoy advantage due to the robustness and longevity of our solutions.

New technologies enable Plantronics to continue its long history of improving comfort, intelligibility and efficiency in the contact center. Our newest digital audio processor significantly improves intelligibility, allowing for better customer service, shorter, more concise conversations, and less agent fatigue. Our SupraPlus Wireless, the only purpose-built contact center wireless headset, provides new levels of quality, convenience and mobility. Most notably, we are introducing a SIP-based VoIP headset endpoint which does away with the costly and complex IP deskphone but still protects the voice path from the PC environment.

Plantronics, basing its value on sound innovation, reliability, superior comfort and proven service/support, has more headset systems in more contact centers than any other vendor. Major investment in digital signal processing (DSP) is allowing for ever-clearer conversations, leading to ever-happier customers. Open standards driven by UC place responsibility on the end-point for the clarity of the signal, playing to Plantronics’ past and future strengths. There will always be a market for corded headset systems in the contact center for several reasons:

• Corded headset systems are inherently clearer than wireless

• Corded headset systems are inherently less expensive than wireless

• Corded headset systems do not face the density limits of wireless.

However, where wireless is applicable, either exclusively for supervisors, or for centers with fewer than several hundred agents, the freedom to roam outweighs any audio shortcomings.

Plantronics believes that IP telephony will have the biggest technology impact, with increasing numbers of calls being routed over Ethernet. While some contact centers will allow processing of the voice signal by a PC, others will insist on a dedicated SIP end-point headset system for robustness. Plantronics will offer all those solutions and more.

The mobile staff scenario, with agents having ACD routing to applications on their wireless devices as being at their desks, is common in the Scandinavian countries, and we do see it becoming more widely adopted. RF density limitations, particularly if Bluetooth devices are used, will continue to gate such strategies in very large centers. Plantronics will continue to offer a broad array of solutions making sophisticated, hybrid environments possible.

Fast, friendly and efficient customer service will always be required, and are a key competitive differentiator during economic downturns. As rote questions are answered online we expect agents to be handling increasingly complex queries. We have seen particular strength in the financial services sector as customers increase their information requirements. Our global presence allows us to benefit from countries and regions that are enjoying greater economic strength. Plantronics is using this period to invest heavily in our new products and technologies, preparing us to be strong out of the gate as the economy rebounds.

Sennheiser Electronic Corp. (www.sennheiserusa.com)
William J. Whearty Vice President, Sales Consumer Electronics, Telecommunications and Audiology

We have seen a reduction in wholesale exchange of headsets in call centers of all sizes. Customers are extending the life of older inventory that may have been discarded or used as a trade in prior to this economic cycle. Sennheiser expects a four to five year life for a headset under normal usage.

We have created new wireless products and will release additional wireless products for use in small offices through large call centers. We will be releasing new mobile products in 2009 to address the demands of mobile customers. We create these products in conjunction with market feedback from consumers, manufacturers, and our dealers. We have upgraded several of our most popular call center headsets to improve the durability of products many customers agree are already the most durable available.

Sennheiser products are uniquely positioned to fill those needs due to our durability, outstanding noise canceling microphones, and receive sound quality. Customers should always measure the cost to own a headset; it is far higher than the cost to buy. As an example, if you buy a low priced headset that has poor noise canceling performance, your agents will spend more time repeating themselves to their customers. That means that the call center will be louder due to the other agents trying to compensate so that their customers can hear them, and inevitably reducing customer satisfaction while increasing costs. After many years in this business, I have found that people that believe all headsets are the same: usually learn a valuable lesson to late.

Sennheiser Communications (News - Alert) is seen as the premium product in the space. We are still fairly new to the market, having delivered our first products in December 2003. We quickly grew to an estimated #3 market share position, and despite the economic challenges, managed to grow our telecommunications business organically in 2008, a testament to our products in a market that saw the majority of our competitors decline.

Our strengths continue to be durability, sound quality, safety, comfort, and innovation. We will continue to add products and pursue the mobile market, office wireless, PC gaming, as well as develop product for call center applications across all spectrums. The Sennheiser dealer and distributor network is large, not all carry our telecommunications products, but the access to the consumer and corporate markets is in place for the right products.

A call center headset has to do a few things well; provide clear voice transmission and receive quality, be comfortable for long periods of time, safeguard the user from acoustic spikes, and be durable. Nothing wastes time like a call center employee walking around with a broken headset.

We make a great headset, and we will continue to invest in call center wired headsets, we don’t see that segment declining, especially as call centers that were outsourced to other countries come back to the U.S. We do see more wireless units going into traditional call centers, but those are generally for managers. The market that most headset manufacturers wants to penetrate is the office worker, the person that spends time on the phone, but does not see themselves wearing a headset. That person, once they understand how much more productive they can be working hands free, typically wants a wireless, sleek and comfortable, with extended range so that they can get up and move and do tasks such as get a file.

We certainly see some short term declines in select markets, such as the financial sector for call center products, however, even within banks there is some demand as banks add staff to handle defaults and troubled consumers. The contact center market will continue to be a steady one for us in the long term as we continue to gain market share. The highest growth we target is office wireless, followed by PC products for gaming and internet telephony and video, followed by traditional wired headsets. Post downturn, we see pent up demand for new products and applications, we feel we will be well positioned to serve that demand as our development teams have never slowed during these recent times. We continue to invest in the markets and products we predict will grow now and in the future.

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