Empowering Frontline Workers: How Jabra and AI Transform Retail Communication

I think the really interesting trend moving forward though is the proliferation of AI agents and and we think that we can act as a critical gateway to AI agents moving forward. Hello and welcome to the Retail Podcast. Now today we're going to go into an area that I love and have had

lots of experience with. And I'm really curious to to dive directly into Andrew Doyle, who's VP of frontline of Jabra to talk about empowering, which I'm pretty sure frontline workers as he's the VP for frontline workers at Jabra. And so some of you may or may not know Jabra. So Andrew, why don't you set the scene for us? You know who is Jabra and then bring it down to frontline workers? What are you guys doing in this

space? Thanks, Alex. Well, firstly, thanks for giving us the opportunity, Sir, to join you on the podcast. A little bit of background to Jabra. So actually Jabra's part of a

Danish group called GNGN, still Noor actually 156 years old. That's what that matters. And a little anecdote. GN was the first company to create telegraphic communication between China and the rest of the world. So a little anecdote for you. And we like to think that we're still in the world of communicating and connecting people. Even now. We have 3 divisions. We have our hearing division. So one of the world leaders in, in, in hearing aids.

We have the cool part of our company, which is the gaming division. So for the gamers out there, we we have a brand called Steel Series, which again one of the world leaders in in gaming gear. So everything from headsets to keyboards to mice. And then we have the enterprise division, which is the business that frontline resides.

And I think probably a lot of your listeners will be aware of Jabra through products, speaker phones, headsets, even video collaboration products that were particularly targeted with, with the desk based or the knowledge worker. So that's kind of our our pedigree. And you can probably sort of perceive the synergies that exist across the group in terms of our technology capabilities, particularly around audio and IT. You know, we've, we're particularly intrigued in this

sort of frontline worker space. We, we made the strategic decision to, to invest in what we think is a great market opportunity of frontline workers and particularly retail because we think we can add some value in that space. And it's, it's really around the provision of, you know, superior audio technology towards the front line and towards retail workers. And that is sort of to improve

collaboration through what we think of as human to human communication, but also human to machine communication, particularly the proliferation of AI. So kind of what brings us into the space. Yeah. And we we look forward to trying to build sort of our business and build improved solutions in

the forthcoming years. I sort of get the play that you're making in terms of your, everyone who works in enterprise is aware of the brand, they've seen the headsets, they've had some working relationship with you.

If if you've worked, as you said, you're a knowledge worker or, or been in the enterprise environment, what, what, what makes you feel or what was the research or what was the element that made you guys feel that there was, this is a great time to go into a market that has existed for a long time. So it's a, it's a tough move, I think, but I'm curious about those elements. You will already know, but what well, we're really good in this area.

We're really good in this and that's what we see is needed. I'm curious what what those areas? Well, I think we're seeing this sort of, I mean, you know, retail in particular is constantly looking to drive productivity, customer service engagement of of associates. And we're starting to see I think the recognition that, you know, improving communication through. So what we hear this phrase digitalisation at the front line and sort of phrase, I think that's been been used for a

while. What we're seeing is sort of the

sort of what we regard as key partners of ours like sort of Microsoft Zebra Technologies and now building really strong digital capabilities in their software platforms for two way communication push to talk applications such as work cloud sync teams, walkie-talkie. We're seeing those that proliferation of those devices of those sort of software application. And what we think is that actually there is a real value add that we can bring from superior audio and pods essentially.

And yeah, we think that's a sort of a missing component today, the quality of audio as we think ultimately you know those if you can enhance communication, you can increase productivity, accurate two way communication, customer service, giving better information directly to your associate enables them to be more engaging with customers. And of course that in itself provides better engagement for the for the worker.

I think the really interesting trend moving forward though is a proliferation of AI agents and and we think that we can act as a critical gateway to AI agents moving forward. In what way? What? Unpack that for me What? What you mean by that? Yeah, I mean, so if we think about the fact that voice is the most natural way for us to communicate and it seems to be

now a general building consensus, the voice will be the interface to AI agents as there was a clear productivity game. So I was in preparation today. I was, I was looking at sort of some data points and they consider that that was really interesting. The human brain, we can process around 500 to 600 words per minute in thought. And we when we speak, we can essentially speak at a speed around 200 to 300 words per minute. But once we tie, that drops to between 40 and 70.

So essentially we speak four times faster than we tie. It's even higher actually if you compare it to typing with sort of a small handheld device. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I'm fairly certain that we're fairly certain the voice is going to be the interface to AI, to voice driven applications and particularly AI agents. So we think voice is going to be critical. Why do, let's say headsets matter? You think about sort of really fundamentally what the headsets do.

They do two things. They allow you to operate heads up and hands free. That's a term we use a lot and typically people working on the front line are multitasking by nature. They're having to communicate while undertaking another task. So the ability to operate, if you have to pull out a handheld device to interact, to update information, actually quite cumbersome. It slows down productivity. So that's one big advantage.

Headset then increasingly important is, is audio intelligence, so the importance of obviously being able to hear information accurately. So I use the example of an AI agent understanding what the AI agent's telling you, but really

critically able to update the AI agent accurately. So the audio intelligibility headsets improve that significantly then using sort of, yeah, let's say a detached speaker. So that's where we think we play a role. And you know, as organisations are considering the deployment of AII, think the consideration of hardware, specifically the audio device, is actually going to become quite important. I got you. So again, please correct me if I'm wrong.

So you're ultimately complementing the device the whoever the the retailer is using, whatever device they're using that has some form of audio capability. That's that's where where you guys are playing, right? Exactly so we. The handheld device as well or or anything like like Zebra? No, I mean it's anything. No, exactly. So we connect to the Zebra device and if that was running an application that could be a voice based, a voice enabled application or game.

Yeah, they all, they all. Have right, all of them have a some form of push the. Tool for. Voice capability now. Exactly. So you're enhancing that that capability basically through the parameters of being heads up and hands free.

Then increasingly important this this principle of audio intelligibility. I mean we have sort of a data point around transcription. So of course how you do this transcript audio through to text.

If you take a an enterprise grade products such as Jabras, we will achieve the sort of transcription accuracy of around 96%, something like really, yeah, which is compared to let's say a standard consumer grade headset that will be as low as 64% in the world where you, you know, you are actually updating key data for maybe to drive workflows actually that that level of inaccuracy becomes comes, you know, quite

significantly problematic. So thinkers, organisations are thinking forward towards sort of again using voice LED applications. Everybody needs to think about the hardware components. So yes, the clarity and the accuracy is what I'm hearing, right. That's really down to the, the quality of that mic picking up is, is the difference between with you having to repeat lost productivity in lost communication, How how sorry, go

on. No. I was going to say these as we think about the microphone technology, you know, typically that microphone technology needs to work in noisy environments. Yeah. Yeah. So you think some sort of noise cancelling or? Yeah. Exactly. But is that what we're talking? I mean, like, are your devices noise cancel? I'm giving them a bit of a geek and nerd. I'm I'm curious, like, are you cancelling noise? Are you doing that sort of stuff? What's? What's going on?

So that's where sort of the secret sauce is, if you like, is a, is a business. We, we, I think it's consumers, we tend to think of noise cancelling from the point of receive. So typically a lot of us will have, you know, will listen to music using noise cancelling on a plane and you know, you hit that button and it's quite transformational, that experience. Yeah, yeah. But essentially we, we, we do that so we, we can reduce the noise for you as a listener.

But I think really importantly, we through noise cancelling microphone technology and digital algorithms and we're able to essentially create the same effect. But when you are transmitting, so essentially we are able to cancel that, that, that bubble of noise around the microphone. So the, everything that's transmitted is your voice.

Again, that's where the you know, that's where the the smart technology comes in. You don't do one for podcasters any amount of conferences I go to and then we have to spend so much time digitally deleting all the background noise. And I've, and it's interesting because a lot of the consumables for, for consumers microphones are now coming with sort of some

form of noise cancelling. And, and I think what that's really good because if you're getting that consumer grade, then your business is still using archaic whatever methods for, for, for it's, you know, it's I, I can imagine because I've had those things in my ear on a shift and they are really problematic and they do 'cause headaches and they have all of these other things as they it. Opens up a whole world really I think I mean this is sort of what makes again has come back

to why we think we have an interesting the original question. Why do you think we have a a sort of a business opportunity here? I think it's because once you, if you believe I met my first couple of weeks in this role, I met UK retailer and they're on a journey of thinking about how they can provide AI agents for for employee guidance, how to tools super great.

They're a really brilliant proof of concept that they're running. You know, the, the, the, the IT lead was of the opinion. If I don't get the device right, the headset doesn't work. This falls over. It's all that heavy lifting in the back end actually almost hinges on how good the quality endpoint devices and you know they see that from audio intelligibility. You know the product, you know the audio transmission needs to be good enough, but also you think about these are personal devices.

We I think we will be asking a lot of retail associates to wear comfort becomes important. And is it available in the market right now or are you how, where are you in your development? Yeah. So we've, we've, we've had a product to the market for for a few years, but we, we which was is a, a more classic Bluetooth product Perform 45. And now we've just launched a

new product called the Perform 75. I've got 1 here in front of me. The the, the. Yes it. Is the one the mic? OK, got you. So this one is a mic and then if you for comparison, then you have I'm concerned the Bluetooth will kick in. But essentially this is them more classic Bluetooth style device. And I think you know what we some of the attributes that I think are important and all our devices with the fall is the

interoperability. So all of our products we build, we work with Microsoft Zebra seller, all the key brush to talk vendors. We ensure that our products integrate seamlessly. So there's this notion that, you know, this would fall down straight away if yes, I've got a handset, but I need to take, need to take the handheld out of my pocket every time I take a call, yes, I take a call needs to work, needs to be fully in top.

So, so yeah, that's, that's key. So working closely with the partners around that into interoperability. So the two products are out. Yeah. And we're pretty excited about what, you know, the, the, the early response has been really positive so far. And again, final technical geek question, but what's the, what's the battery life? These are the important questions. This is not normal, but you know, I'm thinking if I'm going to deploy this, what was the

battery life on these things? I think it's interesting with this product. So this is the perform 75. So this is a a larger this, this product's been designed to work across all the way from sort of the back of store in sort of warehouse environment or stores environment all the way to the front of the house. To answer your question specifically, we'll achieve 30 hours of battery life with this.

So this will easily do multiple shift. But we've done that. I don't know, sort of yeah, I don't know how easy this works on the podcast, but so yeah, yeah, it got you, you know, you essentially once we've done with this designs a few things that are unique. So we created the modular product. So we actually have you can essentially deploy the headband to all of your social, the mic. That's crazy.

Exactly. And then the the, the smarts of the product, you would just deploy what was needed to cover a full shift. And then we essentially have created what we call a hot swappable battery, which means you can charge in between shifts and then the associate would arrive in the morning, grab their personal headband wheels, have a neck bands and alternative wearing style.

It would simply grab one of these and one of these from the charging Bay since they connect that and then they're up and running. And then with the ease of sort of connectivity, so simple tap to pair functionality on Bluetooth essentially, then you have them up and running really quickly. And that's been sort of key for us. So we've thought about shift work, we've thought about shared device, we've thought about power management and we've thought about ease of use from

trying to build this. And you know, you come back to the microphone, yes, it is a long microphone. And I think you know, we shy away from that as consumers to an extent. This comes back to to the audio intelligibility. Yeah. You want it. Just me if you want some people to hear you or not, Yeah. Well, this will, this will

create 99% noise cancellation. So there's a huge specific fit in terms of being able to be heard. And again, that's important. If I'm speaking, you and I are speaking now it's equally important if you're then, you know, working towards a voice activated application where the accuracy of what you're saying becomes really important, that there's a dangerous, you set up a workflow which is wrong. So that becomes really important.

So yes, that's what that's kind of I, I sort of went a bit further than your question, but you're sending it. Yeah. As I said, it's an area that I've worked in for a long time. So I'm, I personally, I'm curious about what, what the future of this area looks like. So, but with that, I'm going to be respectful to your time and say thank you very much. It's been great.

If people want to find out more information about yourself and the the stuff that you've been showing us, where, where, where should they go? If they go to jabra.com and the perform sub page within jabra.com, you'll see all about

our products and I think we have links to to the team to connect. Wonderful. Andrew, thank you so much. Thank you, Alex. Appreciate it.