Plantronics as you may or may not know were recently bought out by Polycom, famous for their VVX IP desk phones, conferencing technology & unified communications platforms.
In the headset industry, Plantronics for the last 25 years have held the Top spot and market share worldwide for business headsets ….until now! Plantronics may have been bought out by Polycom but as a brand their market share in our view & our personal opinion has started to wane. So…Why have Plantronics started to lose so much market traction?
The obvious answer would be increased competition from other manufacturers especially the likes of Jabra, Sennheiser / EPOS & Streamline headsets who in our opinion often offer a much higher quality product or at a minimum, an equivalent product with better features and more importantly, increased benefits to the end consumer, namely you! Plantronics have always dominated the contact centre space but again increased competition, has over the last 5 years been eating away at their dominance in that sector .
Many of the Contact centres And I T managers have now realised that there are alternative products which offer far greater build quality, something which is paramount in a contact centre environment due to the very nature and rugged way headsets are often handled by agents. And the new products are also highly price competitive compared with Plantronics.
The two single biggest problems that any Call centre or IT manager looking after a contact centre will tell you are:
- Noise cancelling for the person calling in (I'm sure we've all heard what other agents are talking about when you call a large call centre rather than the agent themselves
- Secondly due to the sheer peripheral noise that surrounds any contact centre agent it makes it very difficult for them to concentrate on a call.
In our experience these 2 major problems have only been partially answered, mainly the first one of better noise cancelling in the microphone of the headset wearer which basically filters out ( or should do) The noise of other agents in the call centre for the people calling in. You could argue that this is more important as there is nothing worse than trying to listen to a contact centre agent but the constant noise surrounding them doesn't help a conversation flow .
At Headsets 4 business we know after talking to hundreds of contact centre & IT managers that keeping their agents productive and happy goes a long way to ensuring they not only stay in the job as it's considered a very transient type of employment in some cases. But providing them with quality headsets that help reduce peripheral noise around them & protecting them from their own environment will also go a long way 2 ensuring they can concentrate on our calls when we ring in to that call centre.
In our opinion Plantronics or Poly products have failed to cover both these major issues, especially with wired headsets , Whereas the New Streamline ProV-XL ultra-noise cancelling headset will help to reduce both these issues and is price competitive against Plantronics equivalent contact centre models.
The all new Ultra Noise Cancelling ProV-XL
The feedback has been super positive, from contact centre and IT managers & the agents who are wearing them (often all day) and the ultra-noise cancelling microphone makes light work of cancelling out any peripheral noise for the caller – job done
The Streamline ProV-XL wired contact centre headset has increased the size, shape and design of the ear cushions In such a way that it helps to reduce noise for the wearer. Arguably a first in headset technology. On the wireless side of things, no manufacturer not Plantronics not Jabra, in fact, nobody comes close to the sheer build quality, noise cancellation and longevity of Sennheiser / EPOS wireless headsets.
As more and more large scale contact centres & large office environments move over to a UC softphone base we are seeing an upsurge in enquiries for wireless headsets and every time without fail we recommend Sennheiser / EPOS.
The Sennheiser / EPOS DW Pro1 Wireless 
Sennheiser / EPOS have proved themselves time and time again in the field, as a company they are consistently tweaking and improving not only their noise cancelling technology but also the ability to connect to multiple devices across multiple platforms at the same time.
When we have surveyed contact centre and IT managers about their use of Plantronics products alike, it's very rare they say: “we use them because they are the best” rather we use them because….”well we have always done” So basically it's become a learned behaviour or a culture in some contact centres to only use Plantronics or Poly headsets.
To finish off then, I'm sure if we asked the question: if we could provide you with a wired and or wireless headset with better noise cancelling in the microphone and better reduction of peripheral noise for the wearer, Would that be of interest to you? They typically you would say yes. if that's you, then why not take advantage of a free no obligation trial of the Streamline ProV-XL or the selected group of Sennheiser / EPOS wireless products we recommend.
It's the simplest & quickest way to ensure you get the right headset for the right job. Interested? Click here now to set up your free trial Have a question that needs answering? - call us on 0800 644 0424 Mon-Fri 9am-5pm Previous Post: