Integrating Microsoft Teams into the contact center offers a whole raft of benefits, the main one being that it allows customer service agents and back-office employees to seamlessly engage with each another using the same voice, video and messaging platform.
For a successful integration, organizations need to put a lot of thought into selecting the right contact center integration approach for Teams. This requires carefully determining their requirements and evaluating competing solutions according to their ability to maximize reliability and performance, while at the same time minimizing complexity as much as possible.
But how exactly should you go about doing that?
Expert Analysis from Metrigy’s Industry Insiders
A recent white paper from top research firm Metrigy is packed with expert advice from industry insiders to help organizations just like yours achieve a successful Teams and contact center integration. Let’s take a look at the main points that it covers:
Convergence of Contact Center and UC Platforms
The white paper kicks off by explaining why many organizations want to unify their contact center and unified communications (UC) platforms. This section covers key benefits like improving customer responsiveness, radically simplifying communications environments and enabling the integration of productivity-enhancing business applications.
The Need to Support Internal Agents and Informal Contact Centers
Many contact center use cases involve scenarios like internal service desks, ad-hoc projects, application development teams, after-hours call routing and security desks. These informal contact centers require many of the same capabilities as customer-facing contact centers, but on a smaller scale.
Limitations of Microsoft Teams Contact Center Features
Teams offers some basic contact center 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 center needs, such as skills-based routing, omnichannel support, advanced reporting, natural language IVR, AI-powered virtual agents and CRM integration.
Integration models for Teams and Third-Party Contact Center Platforms
Microsoft offers two integration models for Teams and third-party contact center 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 center features into the Teams app. The Power Model will allow contact center providers to leverage Teams components natively into their platforms via Azure Communication Services.
Selection Criteria for Teams-Integrated Contact Center Solutions
IT leaders should evaluate and select the optimal Teams-integrated contact center solution based on several criteria. These include architecture, Teams certification, flexible PSTN connectivity options, integrated management and reporting and analytics capabilities. They should also take flexible billing options, reliability, global reach, user support, lifecycle management, customization options, workflow management and application integration into account.
Metrigy Report
Tips For Integrating Microsoft Teams With Your Contact Center
Unlock the game-changing potential of Microsoft Teams in your contact center!
AudioCodes Live – A Complete Calling and Contact Center Experience for Microsoft Teams
AudioCodes Live for Microsoft Teams is an innovative, holistic offering that builds on the incredible global success of Teams to provide a complete calling and contact center experience for enterprises just like yours.
AudioCodes Live is the ideal solution for consolidating and optimizing UX and CX within Teams, eliminating communication silos and technical complexity at a stroke. It even includes complementary productivity-enhancing applications such as conversational IVR, interaction recording and a generative AI-powered meeting assistant, as well as a wide range of Microsoft-certified meeting room devices and business phones.
If a successful Teams and contact center consolidation is your goal, AudioCodes Live is the way to do it right.
