ENHANCING COMMUNICATION, IMPROVING COLLABORATION AT CISCO

Cisco has built a strong reputation for shaping the future of the Internet and transforming how people connect, communicate and collaborate. This corporate success is fueled by a far-flung workforce of thousands of employees and contractors who work remotely and in offices around the world.

With such a large employee and contractor base, Cisco’s internal IT organization typically receives hundreds of calls each day from co-workers in need of technical support around various issues ranging from questions about their personal computers to collaborating and communicating using TelePresence and Unified Communications devices. The San Jose-based IT team strives to deliver their co-workers with the ultimate level of service and support – handling each internal call just as if they were external customers.

“The tenets of Cisco’s culture include employee empowerment and innovation,” said Arun Kalasapudi, a service manager in Cisco’s IT organization. “With this as a backdrop, it is imperative that our team make each IT call a top priority and deliver our co-workers with the same level of service and attention that they provide to our customers.”

The Challenge

Working primarily in an open environment, the Cisco IT team often experienced a lot of background noise on calls – resulting in a less than optimal experience. To that end, the company started researching headset options that would work better in a “open and collaborative” type setting, in essence, looking for a state-of-the art solution that could eliminate ambient noise and deliver a higher level of call quality. The company also wanted headset solutions that were easy to install and would seamlessly integrate with the Cisco Unified Communications (Cisco UC) platform.

The Solution

“While we often have a physical divider in between individual employees in the open workplace, we still were distracted by other conversations from other sharing the work place. We needed a headset solution that would cater to the next generation of work spaces,” Kalasapudi said. “In addition to high quality, we wanted headsets that offered flexibility and could plug and play across the Cisco product suite.”

Finally, the Cisco IT team wanted a headset solution that easily transitioned to the mobile user, enabling people to use the same headsets even when they were working remotely.

After looking at a variety of solutions, the IT team selected Jabra products because its wide range of solutions, from the Jabra BIZ™ 2400-series to the Jabra PRO ™ 9400-series, provides a headset for multiple needs.

Within the last eight months, between 20 and 30 members of the Cisco IT team have transitioned to the Jabra solution – with superior results across the enterprise. Cisco employees can easily order Jabra products using an internal ordering tool on their intranet. In recent months, the IT team added Jabra to its recommendation for all of the company’s headsets so users can experience exceptional audio performance and enhanced productivity.

“Thanks to Jabra, we are able to provide our internal customers – our colleagues – with a higher level of service by being able to focus solely on their needs without the distraction of hearing other conversations,” Kalasapudi said. “The ergonomics are very good, the headsets are soft and comfortable and, most importantly, we have received positive feedback on the noise cancellation compared to some of the previous solutions.”