When Microsoft released Teams in 2017, it’s unlikely that the company knew it had such a smash hit on its hands. By January 2022, the platform had gained 270 million active monthly users.
That’s no small feat, especially considering the fierce competition from many prominent enterprise technology pioneers in the unified communications (UC) space.
More amazingly, there’s little doubt that Microsoft Teams has helped to transform business, providing a way for companies to shift from onsite to remote working. And today, in the post-pandemic period, Teams has further accelerated the transition to hybrid working.
It’s also noteworthy to point out its continued acceptance rate. Teams has a lot of room to grow.
Consider a research study commissioned by Enghouse Interactive in 2021. In the UK, 90 percent of businesses surveyed used Teams. But, while only 53 percent use Teams for customer-facing contact, many companies plan to shift to Teams after transitioning from their legacy PBX systems.
A Crucible Called the Contact Centre
Customer journeys are more complex than ever. And, worse, customer expectations are higher than ever too.
One bad experience can spell the end of the relationship. Consider the crucially important need for the first call resolution (FCR). That’s when businesses lose customers – within minutes. And consider that customers expect multi-channel access from anywhere on any device. And they have short fuses.
Staying ahead of these issues are the daily anxieties of contact centre managers. It is not just challenging to fix them. It can be daunting.
Fortunately, Microsoft Teams for contact centres provides a way forward, taking operations out of their silos and connecting them to the broader enterprise. Here, they can leverage external knowledge and support, facilitating FCR.
Where Does Enghouse Come In?
As Zeus Kerravala, Founder and Principal Analyst at ZK Research, recently told CX Today:
“Teams is a really good chat product, it’s an okay meetings product, [but] the telephony is substandard.”
As such, many CCaaS and UCaaS partners sensed an opportunity to add telephony features.
Yet, Enghouse is taking this further, adding many more CCaaS capabilities and allowing businesses to run their contact centres natively through Teams.
In doing so, Enghouse was one of the first to fill a gaping hole in the market – and its solution has grown from strength to strength. After all, as Kerralava added:
“Microsoft treats unified communications and the contact centre almost like a feature of Office. Yet, [there is] the chance to make the Teams experience a better experience than Microsoft can. “
There is precedence for this. As Kerravala noted: “Box does document management better for Microsoft apps than Microsoft.”
Enghouse offers another example. It has long seized this opportunity to make the Teams contact centre experience a better experience than Microsoft can.
Now, the long Microsoft-certified vendor has pushed its Teams innovation further, establishing itself as perhaps the go-to native Microsoft Teams contact centre provider.
Why Consider Enghouse?
For 14 years, Enghouse has been a co-development partner with Microsoft. As such, the two vendors enjoy a close relationship, as evident from the following statistics:
- Enghouse was an initial member of the Microsoft Technology Adoption Program (TAP), including LCS, OCS, Lynn, Skype and Teams.
- In 2008, Enghouse was the industry’s first native integration starting in 2008.
- In the 2000s, Enghouse collaborated with Microsoft design teams and R&D in Redmond, Washington.
“Enghouse Contact Centre is the industry’s most comprehensive offering,” said Anna Stokes, Director of Product Management at Enghouse Interactive.
“It’s available in cloud, premise or hybrid deployments. These are true omnichannel capabilities foundational to our award-winning solution.”
Moreover, Enghouse’s integrated contact centre solution offers CX features like dedicated agent and supervisor functions, intelligent omnichannel routing, comprehensive performance reporting, and WFO features.
To discover more about the solution, take a look at Enghouse’s on-demand webinar: The Latest Look at a Microsoft Teams Contact Centre
