Microsoft has claimed it’s achieving “rapid growth” in the CCaaS market.
The news comes just seven months after the tech giant launched its CCaaS solution: the Dynamics 365 Contact Center.
While it couldn’t share the size of its install base, Microsoft has publicly announced numerous enterprise customers, including 1-800 Flowers, Lenovo, and the Mediterranean Shipping Company.
The vendor has also deployed the platform across its own customer service operations, covering everything from Windows to Xbox, having migrated from Genesys in 2024.
Sharing his expectations for the CCaaS platform in 2025, Rob Smithson, UK Business Applications Lead at Microsoft, told CX Today:
I think we’ll continue to see rapid growth. The interest from customers is really high! They want to see it in action, and we’ve been able to share a number of demos from our own global customer service team.
Many might assume this continued growth opportunity stems primarily from contact centers already leveraging its adjacent CRM: Dynamics 365 Customer Service solution.
After all, Microsoft is the second-most prominent global CRM provider, and – with the Dynamics 365 Contact Center – it offers the opportunity to converge the customer service ecosystem.
However, the tech giant claims that it’s also winning significant business with customers harnessing third-party CRMs, such as Salesforce and Zendesk.
Additionally, Microsoft’s CCaaS wins aren’t pegged to particular regions or sectors. As Smithson continued:
It’s a broad range of industries. That’s the bit I’ve been so impressed with. Public sector, private sector, retail… there’s a good mix of customers that are taking this solution on.
AI is driving much of that interest. “Many of them see Microsoft as very innovative on generative AI (GenAI),” Smithson confirmed.
Now, as the tech giant aims to convert that interest into more deals, it strives to look beyond GenAI and unleash AI agents across its CCaaS platform.
Microsoft Strives to Differentiate Through AI Agents
Microsoft launched its CCaaS solution as a “copilot-first” platform, with agents and supervisors able to access their own native assistants.
Already, these assistants support agents in auto-summarizing cases and drafting customer responses across digital channels, with more use cases to come.
Yet, such GenAI capabilities are no longer dominating the headlines; agentic AI is. Microsoft is also moving the needle here.
Sharing more on Microsoft’s AI agent strategy, Smithson stated:
We’re approaching this in two ways. First, we’re giving customers the opportunity to build their own agents through Copilot Studio. Second, we’re introducing prebuilt agents into Dynamics 365, covering areas like sales, service, and finance.
Some of Microsoft’s CCaaS customers are already starting to experiment with building custom AI agents and automating more of the contact center.
Indeed, according to Smithson, developing customer-facing AI agents that autonomously handle customer multi-channel conversations is where most customers’ minds immediately turn.
However, there are much broader possibilities. For instance, the Microsoft man notes how one utilities company is leveraging AI agents to create a central knowledge repository.
“This might seem simple… [but it] takes a lot of time for a person to put together themselves,” he said.
Some organizations have really good internal portals – often on SharePoint – that allow agents to access this information quickly and provide more informed support.
Yet, it’s in those preconfigured agents where Microsoft’s customers can generate immediate bang for their buck, with the tech giant already announcing its first two models for the contact center.
These prebuilt agents help companies optimize specific processes and spark further ideas for customization.
Closing the AI Skills Gap in Contact Centers
Contact center leaders generally rise through the ranks because they’re great communicators, not because of their technology nous.
As such, there’s a significant skills gap to overcome as contact centers start to onboard agentic AI and broader AI use cases. Microsoft credits its deep partner base for helping its customers here.
“There’s a number of partners in this space who are very experienced in contact centers and have been able to keep up and even stay ahead a little bit ahead of the generative AI waves,” said Smithson, isolating TTEC for specific praise.
Alongside that, Microsoft has innovation hubs where it works with customers to dig deep into their core challenges and how they can leverage the Dynamics 365 Contact Center and its native AI to overcome those.
Still, limited AI knowledge remains a critical issue in today’s contact centers. For more on how to overcome this, check out the article: Bridging the AI Skill Gap: The Urgent Challenge for CX Leaders
