The Webex Contact Center for Teams has achieved official certification from Microsoft.
First teased in October - during WebexOne 2022 – the offering opens up Cisco’s CCaaS platform to an entirely new market of businesses that harness Teams for UCaaS.
That is a broad new audience, with the UC platform boasting 280MN monthly users.
Yet, while Microsoft leads the UC space, ahead of Webex’s own platform, the tech pioneer has plenty of catching up to do in CCaaS.
Zeus Kerravala, Founder and Principal Analyst at ZK Research, recently noted this in conversation with UC Today, predicting that the Microsoft Contact Center will flop this year.
As such, many businesses have avoided combining Microsoft’s CCaaS platform with Teams, despite the many possible benefits. These include improved cross-function collaboration, knowledge sharing, and CX reporting.
Now, the Webex Contact Center for Microsoft Teams allows businesses to achieve these benefits by offering an integration between its "market-leading"CCaaS solution and the UCaaS platform.
Webex Offers Deeper CCaaS Capabilities
According to Aragon Research, Cisco is a leading vendor of intelligent contact center solutions, thanks – in part - to its Webex CCaaS offering.
The platform includes 16+ integrated channels, conversational analytics, agent collaboration tools, and much more.
Now, with this integration, it connects to the Microsoft phone system while supporting Microsoft PSTN and third-party direct routing providers.
As a result, Cisco may add considerable value to the Teams experience – beyond what Microsoft currently offers.
Kerravala pinpointed a significant opportunity for Cisco here, shortly after WebexOne. He stated:
Microsoft treats unified communications and the contact center almost like a feature of Office. Yet, Cisco sees the chance to make the Teams experience a better experience than Microsoft can.
There is precedent for such a strategy. Indeed, other revered CCaaS vendors – including Five9, Genesys, and Talkdesk – already provide contact center offerings for Teams.