Plantronics: The Pathway to Effortless Communication

Joe Burton, President & CEO

"One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.” While many would know that these words were of Neil Armstrong, the first man to land on the moon in 1969, what they might not know is that these very words were communicated to the world through the headset developed by Plantronics. Much like Neil Armstrong’s dictum, Plantronics’ story began in a small garage in Santa Cruz in 1961 when two airline pilots set out to invent a headset which would be the alternative to the conventional headsets used in commercial aviation. Even before they realized, the duo had already invented a tool which was not just the world's first lightweight headset but a major breakthrough in the communications world. Driven by the maxim that ‘good ideas should be shared and heard,’ Plantronics has been delivering high-quality audio communication devices to businesses and consumers. The company builds communication technologies that pave the path for rich collaboration experiences.

"We’ll continue to innovate and push the envelope to ensure our products blend fashion and comfort with dependability and uncompromised sound quality"

The greater need of sharing of information is acknowledged by today’s businesses. In tandem, many are adopting advanced technologies in this direction. Today manpower mostly comprises mobile workforce who require efficient and effortless communication than ever before. This change in working style is widespread across geographic, generational, and cultural lines. It won’t be wrong to put it as a global business phenomenon called smarter working. Bolstering this trend is Plantronics with its more than 55 years of experience in innovating audio and collaboration technology and embedding them into its products. The company’s broad spectrum of integrated solutions includes headsets, software, desk phones, audio and video conferencing, and analytics. The aim is to provide its partners and customers with the tools and technologies they require to create and offer focused and distraction-free environment for communication. Plantronics’ efficiency can be attributed to its strong association with Mitel, a company that provides a platform to enable third-party partners (3PPs) to successfully create applications and services that integrate and interoperate with Mitel’s core business communications portfolio. Plantronics is a certified member of Mitel Solutions Alliance (MSA) program and thus can provide a portfolio of headsets, handsets, and speakerphones that are tested and compatible with Mitel desk phones, mobile handsets, soft clients, and mobile applications.

Anytime you’re building a product or creating service it really is a collection of people working together to bring that to market and satisfy the customers’ needs

The Fusion Power

In partnership with Mitel that is growing stronger with each passing year, Plantronics has been designing integrated and intuitive solutions to meet the communication requirements of varied nature. Plantronics’ solutions unify and simplify complex communication devices for enterprise, SME, and contact centers and are compliant with Mitel’s A2p2 certification of function process, ensuring that the solutions work as expected.

The key here is that Plantronics’ entire range of unified communications (UC) solutions are fully compatible with Mitel solutions.On the one hand, the plug and play functionality of the company’s solutions shore up user convenience, while on the other hand, the adoption of Plantronics UC audio solutions offer Mitel customers HD voice quality and the ability to answer and end calls remotely from desktop phones, softphones, and Bluetooth devices. Working closely with Mitel, Plantronics has also designed custom interface cables for corded and wireless headset bases that envelop the entire range of headset connection for Mitel phones.

Currently, most of the UC applications are designed to function seamlessly on multiple devices—desk phone, PC, tablet, and mobile alike. When there are multiple devices to perform similar tasks, it’s highly essential to have one device that unifies them all. The Plantronics Voyager family perfectly fits the bill. These solutions eliminate complexity by providing easy access to communication applications that are independent of the device through a single and common user interface, simplifying the user experience. In addition, Plantronics’ ‘contextual intelligence’ sensor-based headsets along with Plantronics Developer Connection, a community of developers, uniquely allows businesses to maximize efficiency, improve workflows, and gain deeper process integration. The information gleaned from headsets can be utilized by developers to develop applications and improve workflows, to boost business efficiencies.

Organizations have the advantage of zero-risk opportunities while evaluating and incorporating audio devices into UC pilots and deployments. With Proof of Concept (PoC) programs such as Get AHEAD for Mitel and the UC Toolkit, an online portfolio of best practices, IT tools, and user training resources for UC audio device deployments, customers are guaranteed with maximum ROI on their Plantronics investments.

Communication Made Simpler

At the helm of Plantronics is Joe Burton, president, and CEO of Plantronics, who has experience in scripting numerous success stories in partnership with Mitel.

Burton is not only driving business and innovation endeavors to address customers’ most communications challenges efficiently but is also transforming the way people engage with each other around the world. A case in point can be in the call center arena, which is traditionally known to be dominated by a pool of agents who interact with customers using phone. However, as customers now desire to communicate via email, instant messages (IM), or text, and expect agents to provide immediate answers, irrespective of their location, these call centers have evolved into multimedia-driven contact centers. But, to cover all the loopholes in the service level optimization and cost management, contact centers need to leverage reporting tools that enable them to understand and ultimately predict call patterns and staffing requirements. These tools are the key to improved service at every point of contact and Plantronics is the perfect enabler in delivering the modern tools required. Embedding Plantronics smart audio devices into Mitel MiContact Center for Lync reinforces the effectiveness and productivity of audio intensive knowledge workers.

MiContact Center for Microsoft Lync is an all-in-one interaction management platform that transforms dated, voice-only call centers into omnichannel customer experience centers, supporting the diverse needs of agents and supervisors—whether they are on-site or in remote locations. Leveraging Plantronics’ audio devices, Mitel unlocked the potential of its developers to optimize agent availability based on their presence and activity. With Plantronics’ audio devices, headset-wearing state, headset proximity, and on mobile call events can be exposed by the intelligent headset to the application, providing automated and granular agents presence states into the automatic call distribution (ACD) queues.

While offering such inventive solutions to companies across industries, Plantronics pays special attention to the design of each product. Burton, a keen and imaginative strategist with an innate ability to transform opportunities into action, leads the company to create new designs and product concepts. Plantronics team’s adeptness in human behavior and anatomy, ergonomics, color, proportion, and complex surface development translates in the design of advanced products that are not only attractive but are also easily adaptable by people. “Anytime you’re building a product or creating service it really is a collection of people working together to bring that to market and satisfy the customers’ needs,” says Burton.

Plantronics is determined to stay at the leading edge by anticipating market needs and creating designs that align with the diverse and changing customer preferences. As Darrin Caddes, the brain behind Plantronics’ product design states, “The process is never-ending. As soon as you have identified the next new thing, you have got to look for the next big idea or opportunity immediately. Our customers are sophisticated and won’t wait for us. We’ll continue to innovate and push the envelope to ensure our products blend fashion and comfort with dependability and uncompromised sound quality. This is what we live and breathe at Plantronics.”

- Akanksha Minz
October 08, 2018