Microsoft Teams has taken the world of business communication, collaboration, and productivity by storm in recent years. Offering a convenient blend of tools for everything from file sharing and chat, to video conferencing, Teams has earned a massive 320 million users worldwide.
As companies look for ways to consolidate their technology stacks, improve interactions between hybrid workers, and transform customer experience, many have begun prioritizing contact center solutions for Microsoft Teams. With the right partner, organizations can embed flexible CCaaS features into the Microsoft Teams ecosystem, connecting their UC and contact center stacks.
But what are the benefits of a Microsoft Teams contact center, and how can you ensure you’re getting the most value out of your solution?
What Is a Microsoft Teams Contact Center?
Microsoft Teams is an extremely versatile collaboration and communication tool, but it’s not a dedicated contact center solution on its own. Although Microsoft offers access to contact center tools through Teams Phone licenses, such as an auto-attendant capability, transforming Microsoft Teams into a full CCaaS solution requires a partnership with an external vendor.
Microsoft Teams Contact Center partners offer companies a way to access highly flexible and intuitive contact center capabilities aligned with Microsoft Teams. The result is an all-in-one solution for unified communications and contact center as a service, that can reduce operational costs, improve customer experience, and boost workplace productivity.
With a Microsoft Teams contact center, companies can:
- Leverage intuitive contact center features: Microsoft partners offer access to a range of valuable features such as skills-based routing, analytics, digital interaction recording, quality management features and more.
- Improve customer experience: The right solution will help agents to collaborate on complex customer experiences in real-time, enabling faster issue resolution and improved first call resolution rates.
- Optimize omnichannel: A Microsoft Teams contact center can empower companies to connect with customers through numerous channels, from messaging, social media and email, to phone, and even video conferencing with multiple channels viewed as a connected journey.
- Increase agent engagement: Access to a single-pane-of-glass solution for collaboration and customer communication can significantly increase agent engagement. Plus, the end-to-end platform boosts productivity and efficiency in the workplace.
- Empower contact center managers: A single pane of glass solution provided in a contact center app allows CX leaders to easily analyze and track engagement, customer experience, and agent performance across all channels.
- Maintain flexibility: With a comprehensive cloud-based contact center, businesses can easily scale their services and features, and take advantage of new innovations, such as generative AI bots, and automation options.
Tim Peters, Global Marketing Leader at Enghouse Systems says: “A contact center integrated with Microsoft Teams extends the reach of your customer services operation, making your whole organization responsible for your brand in ways that were never previously possible. With Teams, contact center agents and other frontline workers are seamlessly supported by subject matter experts and other specialists throughout the company, delivering a far better experience for your customers. Enghouse Interactive has a long pedigree of working closely with Microsoft, developing integration for Microsoft OCS in 2009. As part of the elite Microsoft Technology Adoption Program (TAP), we have developed integrated contact centers for Microsoft Lync, Skype for Business and now Teams, and in 2020 became the first vendor to certify a Microsoft Teams-integrated contact center. With Enghouse, Microsoft Teams customers know they will get a mature, feature-rich contact center application that’s delivered by experienced, expert CX professionals who truly understand the contact center landscape”.
Microsoft Teams Contact Center Best Practices
Notably, there are numerous ways for companies to bring contact center functionality to Microsoft Teams with the help of the right partner. For the best results, and the biggest return on your investment, here are some of the best practices you should follow.
1. Look for a Native Teams Integration
As mentioned above, contact center vendors can connect their features and systems to Microsoft Teams in various different ways. To deliver an excellent experience to your agents, and minimize disruptions, it’s worth looking for a partner who can deliver a fully native experience.
For instance, certified Microsoft partner, Enghouse Interactive, makes it easy to embed critical contact center functionalities, like digital interaction recording and skills-based routing directly into the Microsoft Teams interface. You can run your entire contact center directly through Microsoft Teams, without having to worry about additional apps and complexities.
Plus, Enghouse’s solution enables comprehensive flexibility. It gives companies the freedom to use their existing carriers or telecom providers as part of a Direct Routing package, and ensures end-to-end simplicity throughout the integration experience. You can even integrate your Microsoft Teams contact center solution with both Microsoft apps, like Dynamics CRM, and third-party tools.
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Prioritize Omnichannel
As standard, Microsoft Teams offers a flexible omnichannel communication experience, but not all contact center solutions for Microsoft Teams empower companies to take advantage of every touchpoint. Look for a vendor that enables you to take advantage of all of Microsoft’s communication features, such as chat, video calling, and voice.
At the same time, think about the additional channels you may want to add into the mix. The right vendor should be able to give you advanced communication capabilities for SMS, webchat, and social media, so you can serve your customers wherever they are.
Plus, a strong Microsoft Teams contact center partner should make it easy to collect and analyze data from all of those channels, with an end-to-end system for quality assurance, monitoring, recording, and reporting.
An advanced omnichannel solution will help you improve team productivity, with a single pane of glass environment for interactions, and access deeper insights into the customer journey.
