In July 2022, Microsoft launched its Digital Contact Center Platform.
While many expected a Teams-native solution, the story mostly centered on the evolution of Dynamics 365 for Customer Service.
Teams proved a smaller part of the announcement, alongside Azure, Power, and Nuance AI – which all feature – in some capacity – within the platform.
Microsoft left it a mystery how many of these capabilities would work together. But, it did announce swarming capabilities with Teams.
This link may have excited some. Although, according to Zeus Kerravala, it is unlikely to be enough to make a significant dent in the CCaaS market in 2023.
"Good Enough" Is Not Enough
The hype around Microsoft in CCaaS stems from its leadership in UCaaS, with its Teams solution having 270+ million users worldwide.
As such, Microsoft Teams offers an excellent platform to pivot from.
However, IT is usually responsible for UC buying decisions. Business/contact center owners have more control over CCaaS.
These decision-makers prioritize customer and user experience, and Kerravala believes that workers often prefer using Microsoft alternatives.
After making this point in conversation with UC Today, Kerravala highlighted how Microsoft's "good enough" approach might clash with many companies' strategic ambition for their contact center.
"If you look at Microsoft’s strategy overall, it tends to build apps that are good enough in nature, and then they do a license bundle," he stated. "This is why companies choose a partner for critical applications such as RingCentral or 8x8 for Teams calling versus the native calling features.
Early feedback on the Teams contact center is the same. It's a good enough product, but I don't believe the strategy will fly in the contact center, as it's the lifeblood of most organizations.
Now, Microsoft’s CCaaS offering does impress with its desktop and native AI, as Kerravala recognizes. Yet, he puts forward a couple more caveats.
These include its reporting capabilities, which require developer support to become consistent with mainstream rivals, and its overall complexity.
So, will Microsoft eventually get its contact center business right? “Maybe, but it won’t be in 2023,” concluded Kerravala.