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As the UK’s fastest growing mobile
telecommunications company, EE believes in
giving its employees the tools they need to
excel.When updating the headsets used in its
call centres in North Tyneside, Plymouth and
Darlington, this meant switching to wireless
headsets so that customer service agents could
be more mobile and more productive.
After exploring the market, they turned to
Sennheiser to deliver a wireless solution that
would improve performance and give customers
better service. Paul Anderson, Implementation
Manager at EE, explains: “After trying out a
variety of headsets, the Sennheiser DW series got
the most positive feedback from our frontline
staff for their design, range and sound quality.”
Sennheiser’s DW Series of wireless headsets
enables contact centre agents to answer calls
to their deskphone even when away from their
desk. The headsets have a 180-metre range (line
of sight), 12 hours’ talk time and fast charging,
with 4 hours’ talk time in just 10 minutes and
a full charge in 1 hour. The DW family supports
both deskphone and softphone connections,
with simple switching between the two at the
press of a button.
EE placed an order for Sennheiser DW Series
headsets for contact centre staff in seven of its
call centres and has been delighted with the
results: “We’ve seen some huge improvements
in terms of hitting our targets and performance
goals: reduced hold time for customers and
overall decreased call time give us fantastic
savings.We’ve also seen an improvement in our
service levels and the sturdy headset build means
we’ve had hardly any breakages, which had
previously been a major problem,” explains Paul.
Additional considerations
Meeting EE’s future requirement for wideband,
the DW series offers true wideband audio when
connected to PC softphones or IP desk phones,
increasing the frequency spectrum to give
better sound quality and
speech recognition. This
is achieved by advanced
speaker and microphone designs, developed to
meet theWideband TIA 920 standard.
The health and safety of call centre agents
was another major purchasing consideration,
as Paul makes clear: “Features like ActiveGard
give us the peace of mind that we are doing
everything possible to protect our staff against
acoustic shock. In a workforce of this size,
avoiding sick days makes a real difference.”
Sennheiser’s patented and unique ActiveGard
technology detects unsafe audio levels and
compresses the signal within milliseconds.
ActiveGard doesn’t just reduce, but rather
removes dangerous energy from an acoustic
burst. This eliminates the distortion from an
excessive incoming signal and keeps the volume
of a sound peak at a safe and comfortable level
to protect the user’s hearing.
Comfort & clarity
In call centre environments where agents
may be wearing a headset for eight hours a
day or more, headsets must be comfortable.
Sennheiser has undertaken extensive ergonomic
research to ensure that the design of its DW
series wireless headsets provides all day wearing
comfort, with impressive results as EE Customer
Service Agent David Tait explains: “The headset
is extremely comfortable: it’s got very good
padding. I don’t really notice the headband – it
has that level of comfort.”
David is also impressed with the improved
voice clarity of his DW headset, which features
high performance ultra-noise cancelling
microphones to filter out unwanted background
noise. “When I’ve used headsets in the past,
customers have often said they couldn’t hear
what was being said. They’d also pick up a lot of
background noise from other call agents.With
this new headset, the speech is very clear –
which obviously saves a lot of time on the call.”
EE’s choice of Sennheiser DW headsets has been a popular one with
call centre staff.
Making the right call
Paul Anderson,
Implementation Manager, EE
solution. Sennheiser estimates that
50-70% of companies that buy a full
UC solution employ headsets. As UC
adoption rates grow, this is having a
big effect on headset sales. Currently
5% of all headsets used in the UK are
deployed in a UC roll-out. However, this
is predicted to rise to 15% in 2014 and
to 37% in 2016.
“Headsets are a key component
for anyone rolling out a UC platform,”
explains Craven. “If a low-grade, low
quality headset is used, it will cause
problems for people speaking on the
platform. Quality has to be as good as on
a handset or better.”
She argues that the company’s
heritage in professional and pro-sumer
audio products gives it an advantage
when dealing with IT managers,
who tend to be responsible for UC
investment, and that this should help it
win more market share in the UC space.
Sennheiser has a 6% share of the contact
centre headset market.
“The traditional telecoms buyer
might not have associated Sennheiser
with headsets but a lot of IT people
will have used our gaming headsets
or our headphones for listening to
music,” she explains. “We have a strong
brand name in these areas. Sennheiser
denotes quality and we are doing a lot of
marketing to make people aware of the
heritage we have.”
Another office trend that that plays
well to Sennheiser’s strengths is BYOD
and fixed mobile convergence (FMC).
Sennheiser is an established player in
headsets for mobile devices and has just
introduced its first Bluetooth headset
with USB dongle. This allows the same
Presence headset to be used for calls on
a mobile phone and on a UC client or
softphone on a computer.
“We need to explain to companies
that BYOD still needs to be a business
product,” Craven says. “The danger is that
people will bring in anything they want.
We need to make sure that when buying
a headset that will be used for business
purposes, people pick something
appropriate.”
As office workers become more mobile
and flexible working practices are more
widely adopted, businesses no longer
have control over the environment in
which employees make and take calls. In
such circumstances, it is essential that
they provide staff with equipment that
optimises call quality at all times. For
more and more businesses, Sennheiser
has become the supplier of choice.
www.sennheiser.co.uk