Even though your workplace likely won’t return to a pre-pandemic ‘normal’, the service delivered by your call center needs to. It will be different –  business as unusual.   To support your CSRs as your workplace evolves and to get back into your cycle of continuous improvement, you’ll need to consider how to enable teams in the new era of hybrid working.

What does this look like in practice?  Essentially it is empowering employees with the right tools to get work done wherever they are – whether that’s from the office or from home.  While working in any location sounds a great idea, realistically you’ll need to provide your team with gear that offers reliability and flexibility for work from any location.

Why hybrid working? Your employees have come to expect it. They’ve realized they can work just as effectively from home as they can from the office, and people really like not having to commute. Here’s more info on your options for hybrid working in this blog post.

Moving to hybrid working in your call center will be complex, you don’t want to throw away perfectly good deskphones, so you’re likely to be mixing old and new telephony equipment, deskphones and softphones, even old and new laptops.  Oh, and you don’t want to throw away those old Poly headsets as they still work really well.

What’s the answer?

The new DA75, 85, and 85-M from Poly.

Featuring some really simple, yet innovative new features, these new smart digital adapters will seriously improve your ability to implement hybrid working.

USB-A and USB-C on the same cable

Why hasn’t anyone thought of this before?  Rather than trying to keep track of which USB port is free on each employee’s laptop, or spending time with each employee when they need a new device, you can just provide the DA75 or 85 to each employee and they can choose either the free USB port, or the best USB port.  There’s no adapter to lose, the cable natively terminates in USB-A, and the USB-C adaptor is attached to the cable.

Teams Certified

The DA85-M is the first call center-specific headset to feature a native Teams experience.  If you are already on Teams, or considering moving to it, the DA85-M will open the full Teams experience – easy Teams access, missed call notifications, and a seamless integration.

Usability Improvements

This isn’t our first rodeo.  The DA75 and 85 are our fourth generation USB to QD digital adapter, so we’ve learned a lot about how people use them.  These new adapters feature improved cable durability, because for the first time, hybrid working means your employees will be taking equipment between the office and home office.  We’ve made the audio experience incredibly good regardless of the headset type being used – the really smart DA75 and 85 detect the headset type and dynamically adjust the audio to match.

We’ve also kept in all the really good stuff from previous products, the Poly QD means you can re-use all your existing Plantronics/Poly headsets – this is the same QD that gives you unlimited compatibility for your headsets across deskphones, softphones (link to DA series product page) and mobile devices. You can manage your devices remotely, ensuring they are always up to date with firmware.

The DA75 and 85 are the culmination of our learning from working with customers over many years, and focusing on what they need to make running a traditional or hybrid call center easier. All of the features and benefits work just as well if you are migrating to a PC based softphone, a cloud connected soft client, or even a deskphone with a USB port.

Learn more about the DA75, 85, and 85-M here: www.poly.com/us/en/products/headsets/da/da-series