How the Right Headset Can Improve Your Sales
Running any business boils down to one thing, making sales and keeping enough revenue coming in to keep the lights on and make sure everyone gets paid. While we all pay attention to the obvious things to help keep things moving in the right direction, even the small things like choosing the right telephone headset can make a real impact on your sales and service teams.
What a Headset Improves
Choosing the right headset for your teams, whether wired or wireless, plays an important role in improving a number of factors that all help to improve the performance of people making or taking calls:
- Keeps hands free
- Improved call clarity
- Prevent workplace injury
- Staff wellbeing
Headsets Keep Hands Free
Perhaps the most obvious benefit to any telephone or communications headset is that hands are freed up to do other things while taking a call. In a sales environment, this can mean taking details from a new lead, finding the account details of a potential client or taking notes on the conversation taking place.
While these may seem like obvious advantages of any headset, the right headset can make a real difference by providing a good fit, meaning the user doesn’t have to continually adjust their headset.
Improved Call Quality
The other advantage of a well-fitting call centre headset is that the ear pads provide a better seal on the ear. A good seal means an improved audio experience for the user, so headset volume can be reduced, protecting hearing and enabling the caller to be heard.
This improved call quality, combined with keeping the users’ hands-free can have a dramatic effect over using only a phone handset. A study by the American Physical Therapy Association found that headsets can improve productivity and efficiency by up to 43%.
Reduced Ill Health
As an employer you want your team to be fit and healthy as much as possible, the healthier they are the better they can deliver in their role. Headsets, whether wired or wireless, play a key role in keeping people at work.
According to recent data from the Health and Safety Executive, rates of musculoskeletal injury account for 28% (470,000 people) of all self-reported workplace injury in 2020/21, with 45% of these cases being in the neck or upper limbs. Looking into the data further, we also find that the second and third most common causes are due to awkward/tiring positions and keyboard work/repetitive actions.
Beyond repetitive strain, posture is also a key factor in workplace injury with the use of a handset likely to encourage users to adopt a relaxed seating position which isn’t supportive. Headset use encourages an improved seating position, allowing the user to reduce the strain on their body and reducing the risk of injury.
Getting the right headset can really help here, with the average cost of ill health around £19,000 per case through sick pay and lost sales, ensuring your staff have the best headset equipment can help to reduce these costs by reducing injury, keeping them at work and productive.
Improved Staff Wellbeing
Well-being is becoming more and more important for businesses as staff prioritise their mental health at work. In the workplace, there are a range of factors that can impact the wellbeing of staff and having the right equipment can have a big impact.
Research by Public Health England suggests that improving the work environment can significantly improve both work-related stress and perceived productivity. In one example BT improved work-related stress by 65% and perceived productivity by 69% through improved information & communications technology.
Though this went far beyond headset equipment, the suggestion is that the right equipment will help the workforce feel happier in the workplace and able to concentrate, something which is even more essential as more businesses move to hot desking and hybrid working models.
