If u have agents on the phone for 40 hours a week, then them lasting a year I think is pretty good. But some call centers give the first headset to the agents and charge them for any headset after that lost or damaged. Then the headsets seem to last longer. U can give them a 'headset allowance' in their paycheck if they complain too much.
I liked best a Avaya headset starting with 'a', but can't seem to find it on the avaya website. It lasted me over 4 years and seemed to have better durability than others that I had used. It had the name 'Supra', but it appears that AVaya has changed the design or manufacturer of their headsets. AVaya outsources almost all of their manufacturing now. I kept extreme carefull care of it because I was told that my next headset would not have the noise canceling both ear feature than I needed due to load co worker nearby.
A lot of damage to headset is caused by them catching on chairs to when u replace your call center chairs purchase chairs that don't have arms that will catch the the wires for the headset. Some call centers use wireless headsets but interferance can be a problem in some cases.

Most of the time the damage to our headsets occur when the agents get the wire caught under their chair, or they roll across the plug (why they unplug them I have no idea).
I love the old Plantronics SP05s, but they no longer make them. We have some that we've been using since '97. The only thing we need to do often is re-end them.

At my previous employer we had quite a bit of problem with headsets. Agents would break headsets (and they do get broken, you can't get around that) and then throw them away or hide them in drawers rather than admit that they were broken. This was a big problem as often it was possible to fix them.

I implemented a policy as described. We issued a headset per agent and also gave them secure storage on-site for them. Team leaders had spares so that if they did break them they could easily get a replacement. The policy was that the headset was issued when they joined the company. They could do what they wanted with it whilst they were employed by us (leave it at work, take it home), but if it was not returned when they left the company the cost was docked from their final pay packet. We had to talk to HR about getting this written into their contracts.

When headsets were broken they were replaced free of charge in most cases (As I said, headsets do break). But if a particular agent was frequently breaking headsets (or losing them) then they would be charged for each replacement).

Whilst there was considerable cost implementing the system (Additional headsets: one per agent rather than one per desk, lockers for secure storage) Return was calculated in about 6 months.

At the point I left the company there had been no need to charge any agents for replacement headsets. We had a few breakages but generally much more care was taken of them.

Regards,
Darryl Beckford
www.darrylbeckford.co.uk