AudioCodes’ Microsoft Teams Contact Center business grew by 40 percent year-over-year (YoY) in Q4.
The spike is partly the result of two megadeals, where the vendor displaced competitor Microsoft Teams CCaaS solutions.
A prominent global university signed one of those two megadeals. It leveraged the Azure-native AudioCodes’ Voca Conversational Interaction Center (Voca-CIC) platform and smart compliance recording solution as part of a 36-month contract.
The second win is a 60-month deal with a Fortune 500 Global Manufacturer, which leveraged the same combination of offerings.
By sharing these successes, AudioCodes signals that not all Microsoft Teams Contact Center offerings are the same – far from it, in fact.
Dave Michaels, Lead Analyst at TalkingPointz, noted this during a LinkedIn Live interview after the AudioCodes earnings call. He said:
With Microsoft Teams offerings there are meeting rooms, phones, SBCs.. it’s all very piecemeal. But, what I like about the Voca offering is that it drags their recording technology, insights, SBCs, and so on, and brings everything together.
Yet, businesses see additional differentiators within the Voca-CIC platform.
For instance, unlike many competitors, it offers a purely Azure-native integration with Microsoft Teams based on Azure Communication Services, in conjunction with other capabilities such as presence-based routing logic, knowledge sharing to spread customer insights across the business, and a unified agent experience.
In addition, Voca-CIC embeds Microsoft Cognitive Services, so contact centers – and other personnel across the organization leveraging the solution – may leverage conversational AI.
Conversational AI and Contact Center Transformations
Across Voca-CIC and beyond, conversational AI has provided another substantial growth driver for AudioCodes – as it leans further into the customer experience market.
Indeed, its conversational AI business grew by over 50 percent YoY last quarter, with voice automation a particular favorite amongst new customers.
Again, AudioCodes has quite a unique offering here with its VoiceAI Connect solution.
VoiceAI Connect provides a communication hub for various voicebot frameworks, allowing businesses to combine the best cognitive services of each framework.
Such innovation is a testament to AudioCodes’ continued reinvention. Traditionally a provider of VoIP phones and business routers, it has embraced new shifts in enterprise communications, found differentiators, and maintained its market position – despite a drop in its conventional markets.
Indeed, AudioCodes’ fourth quarter 2023 revenues increased by 3.2 percent sequentially from third quarter 2023.
Yet, the gains of Voca-CIC and VoiceAI Connect provide a big boost, while Shabtai Adlersberg, President & CEO of AudioCodes, also pinpointed significant growth in its CCaaS transformation services.
During the earnings call, Adlersberg highlighted AudioCodes’ role in contact center migrations.
“When you move from an old supplier architecture that’s on-prem to a new cloud-based vendor, there’s a huge network,” he noted. “You’re talking about hundreds of locations around the world.
To achieve that with high-quality, high-security, and efficiency, our SBCs and managed services come into play. That explains the success we enjoy.
“As the trend of moving from on-prem to cloud continues… we will continue to win such projects.”
Voca-CIC: A Backdoor for Microsoft Into the Contact Center
So far, Microsoft has made little noise in the contact center space, with much of its success stemming from its Teams Contact Center integration program.
While SMBs and the midmarket mostly leverage these integrations, there is interest from the enterprise, too, as AudioCodes’ two megadeals underline.
As such, Michels believes that this lays an excellent foundation for Microsoft in the space.
“The way Microsoft works is that they dabble, play the long game,” he said.
People always ask me: when is Microsoft going to get in the contact center? They already are, through companies like AudioCodes – and this has got to be a strategic focus for Microsoft, and they’re going to keep on growing.
“I don’t think they’re going to get into the enterprise by themselves; they’re going to have to do an acquisition to do that, but this is an important part of the learning and the strategy for Microsoft.”
While that’s an exciting possibility, Microsoft has done little to advance its Teams Contact Center integration program over the past couple of years.
Meanwhile, the tech giant hasn’t listed any vendors under the most advanced Power model integration – despite AudioCodes and some of its competitors seemingly hitting the specification.
In line with this, Zeus Kerravala, Principal Analyst at ZK Research, noted: “I’m less bullish on Microsoft ever becoming a contact center vendor. They have to change the way they build products.
“It’s an area where you can’t throw spaghetti at the wall to see what sticks. You can on the employee collaboration side, but if they did that in the contact center, it’d be pretty damaging.”
As such, it’s left to companies like AudioCodes to build enterprise-ready contact center platforms – and many are stepping up to the plate.
Yet, as previously noted, some are better than others – and only AudioCodes, Contact Center 4ALL, Content Guru, and Vonage qualified as finalists in the 2024 CX Awards for “Best Microsoft Teams Contact Center Solution”.
Who will win? Register to watch the virtual event for free.
