In today’s competitive business world, collaboration and communication are everything. If you’re looking to influence the success of your organisation, you’ve probably looked to methodologies like Agile and DevOps to improve teamwork and operational efficiency.
The most important tool for making sure these initiatives succeed is a unified communications system.
The right communications solution is an important part of your technical infrastructure. It helps teams work together, share important data, and communicate using voice, text, and video. This strong business need is one of the reasons for the massive popularity of the Slack set of software tools. Now, Microsoft is collecting a major part of that demand with their Teams platform.
Migrating to Teams makes sense for companies – especially those with an investment in Microsoft applications like Office 365. But with Microsoft’s relative lack of experience in the telecom industry, concerns may persist about how Teams can provide a secure call centre solution. Communications service providers looking to add over the top services to Microsoft customers need to address these concerns.
Why Do Companies Hesitate to Implement Microsoft Teams?
With so many companies using a variety of Microsoft tools, including Office 365 and Azure, choosing Teams as an integrated communications solutions sounds like a no-brainer. So why is there hesitation? The most common reasons include:
- Microsoft’s lack of experience in telecommunications
- Teams doesn’t provide calling plans capable of serving all remote locations
- The Microsoft Teams support for phone systems doesn’t provide as much functionality as a traditional PBX system
- The company in question is happy with their current PBX solution
Still, integrating Teams with other Microsoft products offers an opportunity for small and medium-sized businesses to boost their productivity. Despite these concerns, the efficiencies cannot be ignored. Finding a solution that connects Teams and industry-leading call centre functionality is key to overcoming these issues and getting your clients to confidently move forward with Microsoft Teams.
Finding a Reliable PBX Solution
Our clients are really excited about the new opportunities session border controllers and new phone solutions offer for the Microsoft Teams and the PBX world such as increased security and flexible calling features. The combination of these solutions offers a great option for companies using Microsoft Teams or Skype for Business that need seamless integration with traditional call centre functionality.
Using a PBX solution, our clients are able to take advantage of useful features like advanced call taking, interactive voice response, call queuing, and intelligent call distribution. Finding a lightweight and reliable system that fits the budget of an SMB can significantly help CSPs looking to deliver Microsoft Teams services.
What to look for in a PBX Solution:
- Advanced call forwarding (even with multi-branch call centres)
- Customisable treatments and voice prompts for hold time
- Individualised hold queues with unique messaging, working hours, and routing algorithms
- Simplified administration using a Web-based interface
- Receive incoming calls with SIP phones or web-based operator console
- Supervisor console for call centre managers for real-time view of full system
- Seamless interfacing with Microsoft Teams or Skype for Business
Flexible Voice Recording
Another important function that companies often search for is a flexible, full-featured option for business voice recording. With a variety of telephony standards and protocols in use, including VoIP, VoLTE, E1 DSS1, GSM-R, SIP-R and more, building a solution that can support call archiving and call recording for all modes is crucial. In addition, the system should include an API that allows you to customise to address future industry innovations.
Having continuity from your current recording standard, when upgrading to a cloud-based contact centre, is important to keep in mind for compatibility as well. In fact, there are ways to migrate historical data from older systems (e.g. Cisco Mediasense) during the transition to ensure no loss of data. Other things to consider include:
- Multi-branch support
- Secure recording archival and access with data encryption
- Web-Based user interface
- Performance and activity monitoring
The Importance of a Secure Call Centre Solution
Cybersecurity is of paramount importance when hacking incidents and other nefarious online activities pepper the news on a daily basis. Best-of-breed unified communications solutions must offer a security layer for the SMB.
Session border controllers can help protect a business’s communications infrastructure from malformed packets, DoS attacks, and rogue RTP messages. By running an SBC as a vCPE, CSPs can ensure seamless integration across communications devices and Microsoft Teams. Customers then simply connect to their telecommunications provider of choice.
Guest Blog by Attilio Licciardello, Co-Founder and General Manager of Mida Solutions
Partnering with the main Session Border Controller vendors to provide the tightest, secure integration to Microsoft Teams, Mida Solutions offers a complete suite of contact centre applications that are based in Microsoft Teams.
Learn more about how Mida Solutions and its SBC connection integrates a unified communications infrastructure with Microsoft Teams.
