World’s most secure headset is here!

By Esha Vimawala on May 18th, 2021

Poly announced a new family of headsets called “Savi 7300 Series“, and it is touted as an ultra secure DECT headset in the market!

For those organizations that do not allow Bluetooth wireless devices (Finance, Government, Banking, Healthcare) for privacy concerns, this is a perfect fit.

For those customers who are familiar with Plantronics CS540 and CS540-XD, they might see Savi 7300 Series as an excellent single-ear (PL-S7310) and double-ear (PL-S7320) addition.

Compared to the CS500 series, Savi 7300 Series headsets offer much more:

2x density (good fit for call center environment)
Base of the headset is both PC and Desktop compatible out of the box (good for flexible working – from home or from office)
13 hours (as opposed to 7 hours) of talk time
Military grade security (so no one can eavesdrop in on a conversation)
My favorite – “Acoustic Fence”. After Plantronics acquired Polycom, they have started using Polycom audio technology in the headsets. This is a legacy Polycom technology where a virtual fence is created around the user blocking out any noise outside the fence. This is a godsend when working in an open office environment or at home – if you have any surrounding noise (agent in next cubicle, a dog barking, or construction noise), it will be completely cut out.

Typically, when headsets reduce noise, there is some impact to the speech quality. With Acoustic Fence, it is not trying to filter noise from speech, but rather completely eliminating any sound coming from outside of a fence. So you can be assured that you are going to sound your best unless of course if you are creating noise inside the fence (bag of chips :)).

Have you ever experienced that while speaking to a call center agent, you could hear other agent’s conversation? That is not going to happen with this headset because the other agent is most likely fall outside of the virtual fence.

This adds to the security story – not only the point-to-point wireless link secure, it also has a fenced audio pick-up area. I do not know of any other headset that offers both such features, and hence I call this one the world’s most secure headset!

So, how to enable “Acoustic Fence”? If you don’t have it, please install Plantronics Hub first.

Now, open the Hub application, and go to Settings -> General.

Scroll down until you see a feature called “Close Conversation Limiting“. This headset is equipped with an additional DSP (Digital Signal Processor) that can be adjusted with 3 options:

No limiting: This means “Acoustic Fence” is turned off, so the headset is like any other Plantronics headset without Acoustic Fence.
Open office: The -M SKUs (Microsoft Teams) have this set by default as this is the specification Poly certified the Teams SKUs to meet. There is a trade-off in audio – using the “Open Office” setting gives the user the best TX noise reduction; however, there are “minor” sacrifices to the natural sounding speech (if you can notice)
Best audio: This is set by default on standard SKUs. Plantronics engineers consider this the best of both worlds in a “normal environment” (i.e. appropriate TX noise reduction, while maintaining natural sounding speech).

Don’t forget – this is just the tip of the iceberg. When you purchase headsets for business, you need a partner who can support your end-users with initial setup, and any on-going troubleshooting so you can stay focused on other things. All headset purchases from BTP include lifetime troubleshooting and warranty support. So, if you are in IT support team, recommend BTP to your company to be your preferred headset vendor!

Our headset helpdesk people answer calls live from M-F 8am-5pm Pacific Time, and people say we are a bit weird that we don’t use chat robots or automated menus to save cost. We think its money well spent by having real people helping real people. What do you think?

A few fun facts from BTP Headset Helpdesk team:

Don’t forget – this is a DECT headset. For those who are not familiar with DECT – it is a European wireless standard that is prominently used in office environment for a few good reasons:

You tend to get better range with DECT compared to Bluetooth.
DECT tends to be more secure as it can only subscribe to the base (unlike Bluetooth headset that can pair with multiple devices at the same time), and the data is highly encrypted.
Typically, you can create a mini-conference between DECT headsets by using a common Base (useful for call centers for listening in).
The headsets tend to be modular – you are likely to keep going forever just with a new battery, a new ear cushion, or a new replacement headset.
If your DECT headset base supports connections – for example, PC and Desk phone – you can combine the calls. This is a great feature if your work environment uses both a softphone and a desk phone and you wanted to combine those calls together.

1. My headset does not seem to be working. Any clues?

Well, is it turned ON? Yes, there is a power button on the headset now :)