Contact Center headsets are critical to delivering the most productive and efficient contact center.
While a powerful CCaaS solution is important for many companies, organisations must also ensure they access the proper hardware to empower and support their teams. Perhaps the most important hardware investment of all is the contact centre headset.
Capable of improving communication quality, enhancing team focus, and boosting both employee and customer experience, the suitable headsets are critical to a contact centre’s survival.
These tools are becoming increasingly important at a time when employees are working from a host of different remote and distributed locations. In fact, the market for contact centre headsets is expected to grow in value by $1.45 billion between 2022 and 2026.
So, how do companies choose suitable headsets? Start by following these steps.
Step 1: Assess the Working Environment
The ideal contact centre headsets should address the unique needs of each employee. Business leaders must assess their working environment to deliver an excellent employee experience and preserve good customer experiences.
Employees working in a busy office or an unpredictable home environment may need more noise-cancellation features. If staff are going to be interacting with customers on the move, they may require the freedom of a wireless headset.
It’s also worth considering the tools and services team members are already using in the contact centre. Employees who rely heavily on Zoom, Cisco Webex, or Microsoft Teams for their conversations need their headsets to work seamlessly with these software solutions.
Some certified products for different CCaaS systems even come with specific features custom-made for certain software environments.
Step 2: Consider Employee Experience
Employee Experience is one of the essential factors any business can focus on in today’s landscape. Not only does giving your employees a better working environment improve retention and productivity, but it can also directly impact your customer satisfaction levels.
Companies must consider the ergonomics and comfort of every tool they invest in. Many contact centre professionals wear their headsets for hours at a time, so they need these devices to be light, breathable, and easy to use. Failure to deliver a good user experience could mean team members resorting to alternative devices.
When choosing contact centre headsets, ask yourself about the preferences of your employees. It may be worth offering a variety of monaural, binaural, wired, and wireless devices to appeal to different staff members. Many employees will appreciate the opportunity to personalise their work experience.
Step 3: Consider Legislation and Compliance
While companies are examining the specific needs of their employees and looking for ways to enhance user experience, they should also be mindful of the standards they must adhere to in their industry. Since 2006, for instance, EU noise laws have required employers to provide staff with hearing protection in environments where noises exceed 80 decibels. Additionally, business leaders also need to conduct testing and access tools to help manage noise exposure from headsets.
Some manufacturers offer access to features like acoustic shock protection, which defends users against hearing damage caused by sudden spikes in sound.
Creating a more compliant contact center environment may also require companies to think about how sound is administered from headsets. Conversations with customers should remain private, even when staff members share office space.
Step 4: Examine Essential Functional Features
Assessing the unique workplace environment and determining how team members are likely to use new contact center headsets should also help business leaders define what critical features they need to look for.
For instance, aside from ensuring a hardware device works with the software solutions business users already access, companies may want to prioritize things like wideband audio to ensure audio is delivered in the highest possible quality.
Some of the key essential functions a business leader may need to look for in a contact center headset include:
- Plug and play simplicity: A headset should be easy to connect to any environment and work seamlessly with the tools the employee already uses. Some headsets can be plugged into a computer, while others can work using Bluetooth connections.
- Controls: Many headsets come with in-line call handling units built into the technology, so users can rapidly put themselves on mute, show they’re busy with an indicator light, and even end a call in seconds. Specific tools will even provide direct access to CCaaS software.
- Remote management: Some contact center headsets come with access to cloud-based software, which allows managers to roll out updates and track analytics consistently, even within a remote team.
Every contact center headset should also deliver exceptional sound quality to both the headset user and the customer they’re connecting with through a powerful microphone. Ensure you can always maintain crystal-clear audio.
Step 5: Explore Innovative Features
Today’s headsets have become increasingly innovative and intelligent. Many come with unique features designed to improve user and employee experience. For instance, a contact center headset designed for Microsoft Teams users may automatically show a busy light whenever an employee connects to a call.
Headsets can also come with AI solutions that help optimize voice quality, remove distracting audio, and reduce echo. All of these tools help improve the conversation quality for the contact center headset user and the people they’re talking to.
In some cases, a contact center headset could even come with access to voice assistants, which allow employees to access information or complete tasks using just their voice quickly.
While there’s no one-size-fits-all strategy for choosing the ideal contact center headsets, focusing on the tips above should help today’s business owners to make an investment.
