Headsets: Part of the UC Conversation

Transcript for Headsets: Part of the UC Conversation

Dave Michels: Hi, this is Dave Michels and I am with the team of UCStrategies experts. Today we are going to talk about headsets. Headsets have gone from the fries to the burger with the advent of soft phones and multiple devices; the headset is becoming much more central to the conversation, pun intended, than they ever were before. And so I think we will start it off with Russell Bennett. Why don’t you kind of set a framework for us, Russell, on headsets and how they are being used.

Russell Bennett (:31): Thanks, Dave. After four years in the Microsoft Real Time Media Team, I think I understand this better than I understand probably most things in UC. The main thing about the headset, or a better way to describe it is the “choice of device,” is dealing with ambient noise. If you are on a soft phone and you have a lot of background noise, then you’re going to start overriding the whole conversation by overriding the silence suppression that’s been implemented in software. Basically, what is happening there, is that the software is choosing not to send packets when it can’t hear any noise, when it can’t hear you speaking. If there is a lot of ambient noise then it’s going to start sending packets containing the ambient noise and you are going to drown everybody out, particularly if the connection is a little bit flaky.

The other thing, of course, is if you are just on a speakerphone then there is a lot of background noise, then you are going to have trouble hearing the conversation yourself.  

Dave Michels: Russell, a lot of headsets don’t have noise cancellation. Do you feel that when you get a headset that noise cancellation is a requirement nowadays?

Russell Bennett: I do, and I was going to come on to echo cancellation next. The thing about the common or garden headset, is that it’s using your head as the echo canceller, right? The sound is going straight into your ear and therefore the microphone can’t pick it up. And you know, that’s pretty sophisticated. A good device these days, whether it’s a headset or a speakerphone or any other kind of device, will contain some sophisticated echo cancellation. And we’ve all been on conference calls where we are hearing the echo, and it’s absolutely horrible. Worst case, it can turn into feedback, which is even worse, and will completely destroy the conversation user experience for everybody on the phone, particularly if the conferencing unit algorithms are not sophisticated enough to try and trap that also.

Echo cancellation is the next big thing, and if you’ve got a device, whether it’s a handset or a headset or a speakerphone with echo cancellation, once again, it will deal with a lot of the bad user experience issues that people are experiencing on IT conference calls. Echo cancellation is absolutely critical. The best devices do a really good job of this. When you are setting up your devices on your laptop or your speakerphone, you’ve got to be careful to choose the right device. Not all speakerphones are very good at choosing the right device automatically. So you need to go into the options and actually select the device that you have attached by a USB, otherwise, they may not pick it up. And if you have got sound coming out of your PC speakers but you are talking into a microphone that’s on a headset, you will still get echo because the headset is unable to detect the fact that noise is being generated from another device which isn’t actually you speaking. So be very careful with your device set up. Thanks, Dave.

Dave Michels: Thanks Russell, you’re making the case that headsets have become more sophisticated and intelligent. Marty, are the users becoming more sophisticated and intelligent in the way they use them?

Marty Parker (3:40): The users are certainly becoming more sophisticated and intelligent, Dave. We see that all the time in terms of how people are adapting communications. As to how they use them, I hope so. Here’s what we see. As we say here at UCStrategies a lot, UC is “communications integrated to optimize business processes.” We’re trying to improve the business processes. And as we’ve posted a number of times, one of the best approaches to your UC planning is to identify and then analyze the use cases within your enterprise – how UC can improve both the user’s productivity and the business processes, what we call UC-U, UC-B. When you do that, usually companies will find about five to six use cases will cover more than 80% of their users. And then they have a lot of clarity about who are the people that are going to be using the unified communication, and how they are going to be using it. So for example, if one of the use cases is care providers in in-patient hospitals, then you begin to realize, well, those people need hands-free capabilities and sometimes they buy specialized devices. The Vocera device is exactly that, a wearable speech-activated communication device. But we find that even just care providers are mobile.

You want to be a claims rep in insurance? Fine, you’re going to be out in the field on a mobile phone. Well, that mobile phone, in order to be safe when you are driving, if you talk while you are driving, you want to have a headset and it may either be wired or it may be wireless, depending on the nature of your convenience and how much battery life you have in the headset.

A logistics manager in a manufacturing firm, however, is probably going to be at their desk most of the time. And you might say, well, then they’ll just talk on their speakerphone, but no, they are probably working in a cubicle so they need a headset even there. Whether it’s a headset like call center agents are using that connects up to a desktop telephone, or it’s a headset that plugs into a USB or has Bluetooth connectivity to a USB dongle or the Bluetooth built into the PC so that they can use a cell phone built into their logistics software.

People working in Salesforce.com would be another example of that, where they are at the Salesforce.com screen and they are communicating through their PC, through a cell phone, click-to-call, click-to-answer, that sort of thing; headset is going to be a natural. So there are a lot of different examples of where that’s necessary. Sometimes the headset will be more purposeful, will be useful only at certain times in a person’s workday. For example if you are a manager who holds a lot of meetings in your office, you may not wear a headset. But if you are going to host a video conference with your team who is calling in from their home offices and from the road, maybe you want to wear a headset just for clarity and frankly, for privacy, so that everything said on that video call is not heard down the hallway.

So lots of good reasons to use headsets and especially a good reason to define your use cases in unified communication so that you know what type of devices the people will need; how much to budget for them or how much to reimburse people for them if they bring their own; how to manage them as part of the process. So I really encourage use cases as a driver for the decision on what types of headset to use. But I think others are going to talk about how they work.

Dave Michels: Marty, can you confirm or contradict my opening statement about moving from the fries to the burger? Are customer organizations you’re working with asking about the headsets early in their process when they're picking their technologies, or is it more of an afterthought once they have picked their technology, their call management technology.     

Marty Parker: Yeah, that's a great question. Usually, they are talking about it in the middle. So maybe it’s the lettuce and tomato and cheese, because they start off thinking, I’m going to put UC out to my employees, and then they wake up and say, “Oh - I don’t have to use a phone anymore.” And then they say, “if I’m not going to use a phone, what kind of devices should I budget for?” Voila! We’re talking headsets; we’re talking USB speakerphones, that type of thing. So my experience currently in the market is it’s in the middle. It’s not right at the beginning, but it certainly is not being left until the end.

Dave Michels (8:08): Well with that point, let me ask Jim Burton. Jim, if you’re going to budget for headsets, is it just simply a number, are these commodities, or are you seeing differentiation among the vendors?

Jim Burton (8:15): Well, it’s a really good question, Dave. If you go to any store, you see headsets all over the place and that would tend to make you believe that they are commodity products. But if you are looking for a quality headset, the one that you would use on business on a regular basis, something that is allowing you to communicate well and doing what Marty says – looking at the use cases for how people use them, you will see that not all of those headsets are readily available in a consumer environment or on a commodity basis. The venders have all developed phones that are geared towards specific areas. We all remember back when headsets were primarily used in contact centers. That situation is still evolving and working. But the big place, in UC, all the vendors have come up with UC headsets. A number of them have made headsets that work specifically with (Microsoft) Lync and they usually have different characteristics than what you might find in a commodity product.

At the UC Summit this year, we had a special session on this topic, because I think it’s so important that people really pay attention to the acquisitions of some of the components that go into a UC solution. And the outcome from that was that it really needs to be a decision made early in the process where you’re thinking about what you are trying to accomplish, not left to the last minute where the only thing you are looking at is price, because price does not necessarily always bring you the results that you are looking for. So I think that is a critical component.

The other thing is, if you think about the different use cases, there are a lot of different things people will be using headsets for. We’ve all known, because all of us have been briefed by Dolby on what they’re coming out with for audio conferencing, and in their case, an audio conference – although you could use a monaural headset, a stereo headset really improves the opportunity. And again, those quality headsets, I don’t view them quite as consumer products for the enterprise. So the answer, Dave, is I think that there are consumer products out there that are commodity, but there are enterprise products that I would say are a little more specialized, and that is what people should be looking at to really deliver the value to the enterprise customers who are using this on a daily basis.

Dave Michels (10:34): Very good. What surprises me about the headsets along these different venders is in the soft phone world we use the USB interface as a fairly decent standard. But on the actual telephone sets, there is the RJ-11 but to get the signaling, the electronic hook switch, and stronger integration, there seems to be a different cable for every vendor and every brand out there. It seems to be a real barrier to entry for a lot of vendors to make so many different devices.

A lot of people get their first headset associated with their mobile phone, just so they can drive and do things a little more safely. Of course those are not necessarily designed for the enterprise. Michael, do you have any comments on headsets in the enterprise on mobile and on desktop devices?

Michael Finneran (11:15): Sure – certainly headsets are a big part of mobile, particularly now with the number of states that have laws requiring hands-free operation while driving. And a lot of those features that Russell was alluding to earlier like noise cancellation, become very important in a car. But actually the thought that struck me when this topic was first presented was mobile communication-enabled business processes in the warehouse. A few years back I had a briefing from a company called Voxware. And basically they have a solution for what we call audio order picking. Now a few basic pieces: it works in a mobile computer like the ones that Motorola Solutions or Intermac or Honeywell makes, most of those are actually Windows Mobile Six. They’re used both for bar code reading and generally operate over a wireless data network, most typically Wi-Fi.

But Voxware had a really interesting idea. Traditional order picking in a warehouse either works off a pick sheet, a piece of paper that you give to the agent and they go look for things, or sometimes will display that on a mobile computer. However, what Voxware does is have an application on the mobile computer and the picker wears a headset. So basically they hear the instruction, and of course you can give commands like next item, next item, repeat. But what they found out was, there was a real service improvement that resulted from audio. One, the picking got to be a lot more accurate, but even more than that, now the agent who is out there doing the picking is hands free. And one of the biggest elements they found was safety. If somebody is looking at a mobile computer or a pick sheet, there is a good chance they are going to get run over by a forklift in one of these warehouses. So it turned out to be an amazing process improvement in a way not normally associated with a headset. But really, using it as part of an overall warehouse automation system. So yeah, we do a lot with headsets in mobile, Dave.   

Dave Michels (12:53): Very board-like, getting your instructions being part of the collective and going out and picking up all of those products. Interesting idea. There is a lot of actual integration with headsets these days with what we call CEBP, or communications-enabled business processes. Phil, do you want to hit on that a little bit?

Phil Edholm (13:09): Yeah, I think that this is actually a very interesting discussion. I think what we are finding is that what came first obviously in the contact center and the enterprise, and then in the mobile devices, is now becoming essentially something that’s becoming a ubiquitous expectation. And I think that’s the thing that as an enterprise, need to understand now is that the old adage about a headset that was basically a band that went across your head, messed your hair up, made you look like a junior person, has to a great extent gone away. Because senior executives are wearing an earbud with their cellular phone when they are out and about, and they’ve become comfortable with that. So all of a sudden, the question that’s coming back is, how do we integrate a headset into the business? I think this is the point where when an organization is doing UC and thinking about headsets, you really need to think about whether you want your users just going out and buying whatever they want, not understanding what the values can be?

So it’s important to understand some of the values we are beginning to see in headsets. And we talked about some of them, obviously echo cancellation, noise suppression, how well they manage noise values around how well they capture the voice, how well they sound, are all important factors. But then there’s the other side which is, how does the headset integrate? For example, you talked about in the UC world, where you have a desktop device that is a hard telephone, you need to actually be able to integrate with that. And most of those devices don’t have Bluetooth, so therefore you have to integrate with them using a cable.

Which then brings this very interesting point – that the headset earbud manufacturers have actually developed two very different scenarios. And I think that it is important to understand those and understand again the use case application. One is the traditional Bluetooth earbud that you pair to a device. You can actually pair it to multiple devices but you need to be cognizant that when it’s paired to multiple devices, it introduces some very interesting user challenges. You don’t tend to see those in the traditional mobile world because we all have a single device. But if, for example, I have a mobile phone, and I have an iPad, and I use my iPad in the building with a VoIP client on it, running over Wi-Fi, I now have an earbud that is paired to both of those devices. And managing that pairing can become an interesting challenge.

So thinking about that, there is actually this other type of device which is, I think for a use case, very interesting in the building. Which is where the earbud, the actual wireless ear device, may look exactly the same, but it does not talk with Bluetooth directly to the devices. It talks to a base unit and the base unit actually talks to whichever device it senses, and it’s designed to be highly intelligent about which device it works with. So for example, and this is a good example, Plantronics has one of these where basically the earbud you’ve got on your ear is wireless, so you can be anywhere in your office and if the phone rings you can answer the phone with it. If your IP phone rings on your IP client on your iPad, you can answer that, or if your mobile phone rings, you can answer that, because all three of those devices are essentially connected by that base. Now one of the big advantages of that type of device is, the wireless technology that’s being used is actually much longer range than traditional Bluetooth. So for example, if an admin has this in their office and they go down the hall to make copies or go down to get something out of the printer and they are 70 feet away from their office and the phone rings, they will actually hear it ring and can answer it.

This brings about a big question that I think enterprises need to deal with which is, do I want to provide users with a device that they use in the office that then may be replaced when they drive home by a personal device used with their cell phone, versus having the same device all the time? Again, you need to think through that strategy. The other thing that is really important to think about is, there are new classes of devices where the device manufacturers have actually decided that they have a role to play in some of the advanced functionality of UC. For example, presence. Presence is about a set of, if you think about it, contacts, and all those contacts come together into your presence or your availability of what device to use. So for example, one of the manufacturers actually is using proximity sensing so that when the headset is on the ear, it actually can sense that and provide that as presence indicator.

So if you think about, for a moment, whether or not you are in your office, today is actually determined typically in the presence world by whether or not you typed on your keyboard over a certain amount of time, or, whether or not you are actually on the phone or not. But if you are sitting in your office and you’re having a 10-minute or 15-minute conversation with someone, and you haven’t been on the phone, it’s with someone locally, all those presence indicators may go away and they may not know at a presence level that you are in your office. But if you have an earbud on your ear that actually senses that it’s on your ear, and through the wireless is communicating with the base in your office, and knows that you are communicating, it actually can represent your presence and availability in the office.

So I think one of the things that is really important as you look in the UC world at these headsets, not to think of them as just a very simple, plug in audio and add it on on your head. But rather it is becoming more and more an integral part of the overall UC experience and to great extent, part of the UC value proposition that it can deliver. But I think all of those things are making this an important element in the future.

Dave Michels (18:51): I really want to echo two of the points you made. What I really like about the presence detection is, particularly on a mobile phone, it knows that if you’re not wearing it to route the audio to the handset; I think that is very nice. The wireless technology you are talking about, is DECT technology if I am understanding you; I am a big advocate of DECT technology. Not only is it much further distanced than Bluetooth, but you could do a much higher density like in a contact center, everybody can be on DECT and the likelihood of interference is much lower.

Phil Edholm (19:20): Again, it's really important for the use case. For a salesman who (spends) all the time on the road, obviously that is not the right technology, the Bluetooth probably is. But for office workers, people within an office who spend a lot of time there, that is probably in many cases going to be a better technology for them than providing them a Bluetooth headset.

Dave Michels (19:40): I want to give into a little bit about where to source the headset. Is this something that you should be getting from your VAR, your dealer or is this something that you should be buying direct? Steve Leaden, do you have any thoughts on that?

Steve Leaden (19:50): Thanks, Dave. It’s very interesting how the market has really been evolving specific to headsets. It started with the call center. It really started with the business unit who is really making the key decision. What it really comes down to is that the enterprise itself, not the IT department, typically owns the decision relative to the headsets.

Of course, when you really get into the price point on headsets, especially when you are getting into Bluetooth-level headsets, you are talking about a price point that is pretty to very expensive; i.e., can be as much as $200 to $250, which could actually be the price of a discounted desktop. From my perspective, you can consider it an alternate way of looking at another end point.

With that now it becomes, how can the channel take advantage of the opportunity? Again, headsets have always been a last thought and not really a strategic thought. When you are looking at let’s say a 100-seat call center as the baseline, $200 per unit, you are talking $20,000. It’s not an inexpensive decision. Now that you add soft phones into the mix, you can add the ability to introduce nano plugs for Bluetooth capability on these Bluetooth headsets from some of the manufacturers. The look at headphones is quite a bit more global.

Where is the channel opportunity? The channel can provide additional support. They can supply additional training. They can use CEBP as a process to introduce, if you will, better use of headsets across the board, and a smarter way of using it. What should be the standards within the community for the enterprise at large? With that really, again, going back to the thought that headphones themselves are an end point – and are not an inexpensive endpoint that you really have to kind of take a strategic look.

It starts with trialing a group of them; creating a focus group and getting feedback from that focus group. Whether it be for the UC client or whether it be for the call center client, or whether it be for a cell phone client, or whether it be for a smartphone client; or any of those that could be inclusive. The bottom line is that it’s definitely a way that you can look at it much more as a strategic rollout versus just a last minute kind of purchase. Thanks, Dave, back to you.

Dave Michels (22:18): Don, you work with contact centers pretty extensively, I am curious if you are finding the headsets are falling into the BYOD category, or if that is more of a corporate-supplied item, and also if you could touch on if you are seeing how dealers are adding value when they provide the headsets?

Don Van Doren (22:36): Sure, Dave, the answer to your first question is that almost exclusively it’s a situation where the company is providing them, at least within the kinds of clients that we typically are dealing with. I did get into a situation one time with a much smaller enterprise that basically allowed people to bring in their own devices. They had a list of things that they sort of would approve and support, but basically they let people do what they wanted to do. But in general, that is by far the exception of what we are seeing. 

Dave Michels (23:09): Very good. And Art, Phil touched on the multiple-device headset that can interface with the mobile phone, the desktop, and a corded phone or a desktop phone. You’re the multi-modal champion. We never have a call without you talking about multi-modal communications. What are your takes on those types of headsets. Do you like to see them converged like that, or do you like to see separate headsets?

Art Rosenberg (23:29): Thank, Dave. I wanted to just highlight a particular aspect of unified communications, where multi-modal mobile devices will play a strong role in changing how we think about headsets. In particular, when you think about something you carry in your hand and you want to talk on it, it’s one thing, if you want to look at information it’s another thing, and yet with UC capabilities you may very well want to do both. You want to be looking at information, whether it’s a text message, or information from an automated application, a CEBP kind of thing, and then you want to use voice commands to do things rather than stop and punch keys, which is slower and is also error-prone. So I would suggest, as what was mentioned earlier, that we’ve got to think about headsets as being part of the BYOD concept, and that’s just one piece of the endpoint device, that could very well be chosen by the individual end user, because they’re the ones that are using it. And they’ll be using it in different ways. Now what that headset device is going to be like, it could easily be something just to listen, it could be something just to speak with, in terms of a microphone, or a typical combination. But it doesn’t necessarily have to be both, and certainly one can think about controlling which input/output mechanism should be used at the moment, depending on the need. So I would think that this is going to be very key for individual end users when they start carrying smart phones and tablets, and also they’re going to be using these when they’re driving a car, because that’s where you have to be hands free and eyes free; whatever it is you’re going to do, you don’t want to be looking at anything, you want to just be talking and listening.

Dave Michels (25:21): Kevin Kieller, do you have any thoughts to add into the conversation?

Kevin Kieller (25:25): Thanks Dave, as usual some great insight from my UCStrategies colleagues. I just wanted to touch on five very quick points.

Number one, make sure that the headset that you choose, whichever one it is, is certified for the application that you’re going to be using it with. That means that all the extra buttons on the headset in terms of mute and volume, and clicking to answer a call, or hanging up a call, will work properly with the education.

Second of all, just think about – and this is back to Marty’s very valid point of doing the use cases – think about the pro’s and con’s of a wired versus a wireless. Certainly the wireless headsets are sexier, but one of the disadvantages is, if it’s not charged and a call comes in, especially if you’re using your laptop as your sole voice system... without having a charged headset, you really then are forced to take it on the speakers of the phone and that’s not necessarily a good situation, especially if you are in a shared workplace. Other people can hear you. So there are some advantages of a wireless headset in that you can just plug it in and it doesn’t need to be charged. A lot of wireless headsets don’t allow you, if the battery’s dead, to take a call and charge it simultaneously.

Number three, and this is also a use case cultural thing for different organizations...I’ve found that many organizations react differently to headsets. I think as Phil said, headsets have been long associated with contact centers, potentially more junior employees depending on the model, and I’ve seen different organizations react very differently to the type of headset. And then it becomes personal preference, whether it’s messing up your hair, etc., so certainly something to keep in mind before purchasing a lot of these. And speaking of purchasing, from a budgetary perspective, sometimes there’s the thought that the headset’s a cheaper way to go, especially if you’re in the soft phone environment. Just realize and do the math that some of these higher-end Bluetooth wireless headsets can be quite expensive. In fact, some can be more expensive than providing, for instance, an IP phone. So you need to make sure that you’ve budgeted for these, especially if you’re an organization that has thousands of people requiring these.

And lastly, one of the things which is very tactical but this just shows the devil’s in the details, if you’re in an environment where you’re using something like Microsoft Lync and people have headsets and they are connected, a USB-type, they may not wear them all the time. And you may need to augment your training because depending on how the application’s configured, the ringing for inbound calls only rings on the headsets. And we’ve certainly found that people will then miss calls because without the headset on, they don’t hear the ringing; although you can configure external speakers on your laptop to ring. But once again, headsets, as was said before, it’s not just really an audio device, it’s part of the entire UC solution. So think about those five things and all the other great things that my UCStrategies colleagues have said. And with that, back to you Dave.   

Dave Michels (28:43): Well with that, I think we are done. Thank you very much and we will be back next week with another podcast.