Aside from its unified communications and collaboration capabilities, Microsoft Teams offers basic contact centre features like call queues, auto attendants, and shared voicemail.
For those looking to integrate a robust contact centre solution into Teams, Microsoft has created a list of certified solutions providers, including names like Five9, Avaya, and Genesys.
Tom Arbuthnot, Founder of Empowering.Cloud will be joined by Patrick Watson, Senior Analyst at Cavell Group, and Peter Broeckx, Regional Sales Director, Contact Centre at AudioCodes, to discuss how Microsoft Team ranks among other key players in the contact centre industry.
Peter Broeckx, Regional Sales Director, Contact Centre at AudioCodes, said: “In our latest CCaaS research report, we spoke to all of the leading contact centre vendors and we noticed a convergence going on as you’ve seen with UC and contact centre.
“We’ve also noticed a trend on embedded communications and CPaaS and how relevant those are for customers in terms of integrating and aligning different systems to create a holistic customer experience for the end customer.”
The panel touched on the question of Teams’ consolidation in the industry, whether it’s driven by the vendors or customer requirements.
Broeckx said: “There are a lot of enterprise customers making a strategic decision for Teams as their collaboration platform. But looking at their communications platforms in general, another question comes up: how do we manage all the rest?
“They had something from vendors like Cisco, Avaya or Mitel. They’re now moving away from the PBX site to Teams. So, there is a dilemma whether to continue using Avaya, which is a pretty expensive platform to be used only for contact centre, or to switch to Teams.”
Companies also need to make sure that the front office can still work with the back office, points out Broeckx.
Contact centre seems to be the last thing moved to the cloud, due to its complexity and that it is directly tied to customer engagement.
Native vs Third-Party
When choosing a suitable contact centre solution, companies tend to either go for tightly integrated solutions or connect them via SIP. Commenting on this, Broeckx said:
“It really depends on the end-customer. A lot of large enterprises that have chosen Teams also have limited contact centre requirements, such as basic skill-based routing or real-time dashboards.
“These companies tend to go for Team’s native solutions on top of what they already have with Teams.”
Teams is doing a great job staying relevant in the contact centre industry as more and more vendors are becoming certified solutions providers, notices Watson.
He continues: “I believe Teams and the contact centre married together quite well. The larger the organisations, the more likely are they to use what Teams has to offer.
“Our research has shown that 88% of organisations with more than 250 agent seats are using Teams specifically for these purposes.
“There is a big overlap between organisations using contact centres and organisations using Teams.”
Great compatibility and integration with Teams are becoming one of the critical differentiators in the contact centre vendor industry, notes Watson.
