Following the launch of Dynamics 365 in 2016, Microsoft has steadily dipped its toe deeper into the contact center space.
Indeed, the tech giant has since launched a Digital Contact Center Platform, kickstarted a certification platform for Microsoft Teams contact center integrations, and acquired Nuance.
However, Microsoft is still only calf-deep, sat on the edge of the CCaaS pool, yet to go all in and build a pioneering platform it can put up in lights.
Tom Arbuthnot, Co-Founder of Empowering.Cloud, believes this is only a matter of time.
"They’re definitely looking at the CCaaS market," he told CX Today. "It’s a huge market, a huge opportunity, and they’re already doing so well in UCaaS. It makes sense.
Couple in their massive investment in AI and consider how big that’s going to be in the service space. They’ve got everything they need; they just haven’t got it together yet.
Nevetheless, bringing these pieces together is not an enviable task, as Microsoft has amassed many CCaaS nuts and bolts over the past several years. In doing so, it has quite the mish-mash of solutions.
Inside Microsoft’s Contact Center Portfolio
Microsoft has not one, not two, but three contact center propositions.
1. Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Service
Dynamics 365 Customer Service is Microsoft’s hallmark CCaaS platform, which it’s slowly but surely bulking out with new features here and there.
Some of these are exciting, including Copilot for Service and Microsoft Teams swarming. The latter allows service agents to share customer cases via the dominant UCaaS platform.
However, Microsoft’s rate of CCaaS innovation is much slower than its cloud adversary, AWS. It also lags many other market rivals – as evident in the recent Contact Center Suites Buyers Guide 2023 by Ventana Research.
The analyst ranked the Dynamics 365 Customer Service offering dead last after evaluating 23 contact center suites.
2. The Microsoft Digital Contact Center Platform
Microsoft’s second contact center proposition – the Microsoft Digital Contact Center Platform - has enjoyed little airtime since its grand release in August 2022.
Instead of providing a new-fangled CCaaS platform – like many first anticipated – it offers more of a framework for integrating other contact center suites with its various cloud capabilities.
Perhaps this is part of a longer-term plan to help on-premise operations leverage elements of the cloud for a more cautious CCaaS migration. However, it’s not easy to glean Microsoft’s strategy.
3. Microsoft Teams Contact Center Integrations
Finally, Microsoft has a certification program for other CCaaS vendors to build contact center solutions for Teams.
The tech juggernaut has had more success here, with participating vendors including industry stalwarts such as Five9, Genesys, and NICE. Altogether, there are 23 trusted partners – with 12 more in the certification process.
Yet, there is once again a twist in the tail. Each certified integration uses an old Connect and Extend model. Microsoft has stalled the release of its newest Power model – which has many significant advantages – for years.
Those advantages include Azure Communications Services (ACS) - Microsoft’s CPaaS platform - on the back end, native Teams connectivity, and a dedicated agent interface for formal agents alongside the Teams UI for informal agents.
Will 2024 Be Lift Off for Microsoft In the Contact Center?
"To win, they must have one core proposition," states Arbuthnot. Yet, he believes that Microsoft is unlikely to make that critical step in 2024.
"Whatever Microsoft’s next big move in the contact center is, it’ll be AI-led," he continued. "They’re obsessed with AI at the moment.
"Its focus will be more on "our AI for the contact center" than "our contact center offer as a whole"."