With over 320 million Microsoft Teams users globally at the most recent count, the staggering growth of Teams as the dominant enterprise collaboration platform shows no signs of slowing down.
More recently, another industry trend has emerged – that of consolidating the previously separate environments of unified communications and contact centre.
The enterprise shift to cloud-based services sits behind this consolidation, as enterprises value the affordability, agility and scalability of consuming technology via subscription services compared to capex purchases.
So, what we are really seeing in the market is a cloud-based trend in converging UCaaS (UC as a service) and CCaaS (contact centre as a service).
Microsoft Teams is where these trends collide, creating a lucrative opportunity for resellers, integrators and service providers to generate wider and stickier relationships with enterprise customers that have a Microsoft Teams-centric strategy.
Integrating Microsoft Teams into the contact centre offers a whole raft of benefits, the main one being that it allows customer service agents and back-office employees to seamlessly collaborate.
Additional benefits come from consolidated management of dial plans, calling contracts, call routing rules, and integration of additional services including compliance recording and artificial intelligence (AI).
However, for a successful integration, organisations need to select the right contact centre integration approach for Teams to minimise complexity and maximise performance. But how exactly should they do that?
Expert analysis
A recent white paper from top research firm Metrigy is packed with expert advice from industry insiders to help organisations achieve a successful Teams and contact centre integration. Let’s take a quick look at 3 of the points raised:
- The need to support internal agents and informal contact centres
Many contact centre use cases involve scenarios like internal service desks, ad-hoc projects, application development teams, after-hours call routing and security desks. These informal contact centres require many of the same capabilities as customer-facing contact centres, but on a smaller scale.
- The limitations of Microsoft Teams contact centre features
Microsoft Teams itself offers some basic contact centre features, such as auto-attendant, IVR and call queues, as well as enhanced capabilities with the Teams Premium add-on license. However, these features are not sufficient for more sophisticated contact centre needs, such as skills-based routing, omnichannel support, advanced reporting, natural language IVR, AI-powered virtual agents and CRM integration.
- Different integration models for Teams and third-party contact centre platforms
Microsoft offers two integration models for Teams and third-party contact centre platforms: Connect and Extend. A third model, Power, is on the way. The Connect Model simply connects the platforms via Direct Routing, while the Extend Model integrates contact centre features into the Teams app. The Power Model will allow contact centre providers to leverage Teams components natively into their platforms via Azure Communication Services.
You can access Metrigy’s expert advice on integrating Microsoft Teams with Contact Centre here.
How should channel partners react to this trend?
Resellers, integrators and service providers looking to leverage the trend in UCaaS and CCaaS convergence should look at how they can achieve a complete, hassle-free UC calling and contact centre experience.
AudioCodes Live Platform is a unique SaaS-based service offering that makes it easy for partners to enable UCaaS and CCaaS convergence for Microsoft Teams. It provides Direct Routing and Operator Connect for Teams Phone connectivity, along with a range of applications including an award-winning AI-First Teams-certified contact centre built in Azure, Voca CIC, that is competitively priced based on usage not number of users.
AudioCodes partners can also leverage Live Platform to easily provide additional subscription services to their customers including interaction recording and AI-powered analytics to improve meeting outcomes.