Ranked among the most popular communication and collaboration platforms in the world, Microsoft Teams has transformed the way businesses connect. With over 280 million monthly active users, Teams stands as a leading solution in the UCaaS landscape, ranking at the top of the Gartner Magic Quadrant, alongside various other industry reports.
As companies continue to shift more workflows and processes into the cloud, in search of greater agility and innovation, many are beginning to search for ways to boost the ROI of their Teams investment. One of the most appealing options involves synergizing the communications landscape, by bringing the contact center into the Teams ecosystem.
With an in-app contact center infused into Microsoft Teams, businesses can align their UCaaS and CCaaS investments, improve communications, and unlock new levels of productivity and efficiency. Here’s your guide to the benefits of building an in-app contact center into Teams.
Why Consider a Microsoft Teams In-App Contact Center
There’s no denying that the expectations of customers has evolved in recent years. Consumers demand more convenient, agile, and personalized experiences, delivered through a range of channels. Legacy contact center solutions often struggle to keep up with these demands.
Leveraging a cloud-based solution like Microsoft Teams for contact center operations empowers companies to serve their customers on the channels of their choice, while eliminating data silos. Solutions like the “Microsoft Digital Contact Center Platform” help companies to achieve a range of goals, combining AI, customer intelligence, and omnichannel service.
With the help of Microsoft partners, organizations can build on the functionality offered by Teams, and the Digital Contact Center solution, with state-of-the-art telephony. The right in-app contact center services bring all of the functionality of a robust contact center and global communications, into the Teams landscape, providing users with a single-pane-of-glass environment.
The benefits of this in-app contact center solution include:
1. A Unified Environment for Communications
Today’s consumers expect businesses to deliver consistent, efficient, and personalized service across multiple channels. To adhere to these demands, companies need more than just an omnichannel CCaaS platform, they need to be able to align data and employees throughout the business.
An in-app contact center within Microsoft Teams bridges the gaps between your employees, their knowledge, and your various sources of customer data. Teams can share information about conversations instantly, access the same resources and tools for customer support, and bring more context and consistency into every conversation.
Addressing this unified environment for communications, CallTower CRO William Rubio noted:
“A fully integrated contact center solution for Microsoft Teams voice means an advanced contact center capabilities within a single pane of glass. By integrating Solgari with Teams, for instance, we reduce complexity for contact center agents who typically manage multiple windows. The single interface will provide agents with easier management of UCaaS and CCaaS delivering a unified experience within the Teams app.”
With an in-app contact center, businesses can avoid having to ask consumers to repeat the same information multiple times as they move from one communication channel to the next. This both improves customer experience, and creates a more efficient, productive team.
2. Enhanced Performance Metrics
Microsoft Teams has already proven its ability to enhance performance in a number of business environments. Via a unified interface for collaboration, communication, and knowledge sharing, companies can achieve higher levels of productivity and efficiency, improving both employee experiences, and customer interactions alike.
With an in-app contact center in Teams, companies can begin to see significant improvements in essential performance metrics, from greater first call resolution (FCR) rates, to lower average handling times, and higher CSAT scores.
A Teams contact center solution provides every employee with the real-time data and resources they need to handle queries, enquiries, sales, complaints, and requests efficiently. With fewer apps and tools to jump between to deliver exceptional results, employees can unlock their true potential.
3. Greater Team Collaboration
There are various factors involved in building an exceptional customer experience in today’s world. Not only do companies need to ensure consumers can access the channels they prefer for support, from self-service bots, to SMS/MMS, chat, and video conferencing, but they also need to ensure employees can deliver fast and intuitive guidance on any channel.
As consumers in the modern world continue to solve more simplistic problems with bots and knowledgebase guides, the issues contact center agents deal with are growing more complex. Often, contact center agents need to be able to access the guidance of subject matter experts and other backend team members to solve problems swiftly.
Bringing a contact-center solution into Microsoft Teams means employees don’t have to navigate between different apps when they need to collaborate with colleagues. Instead, employees can easily connect with staff members, share customer accounts and insights, and speed up the service process.
4. Improved Customer Satisfaction and Revenue
Launching an in-app contact center within Microsoft Teams paves the way for exceptional customer service experiences. With the right provider, businesses can access valuable tools, from call routing and IVR systems, to digital channels like SMS and Email, to delight and engage their consumers.
More importantly, with more access to data and collaboration tools, employees can deliver a more personalized experience. This is crucial at a time when 71% of customers say they expect personalization, and 76% say they feel frustrated when they don’t get it.
A Microsoft Teams contact center can help companies to earn more customer loyalty, leading to increased revenue, greater customer lifetime value, and higher average order values. Plus, the integrated data solutions offered by Microsoft DDCP allows organizations to access the insights they need to make intelligent decisions for future growth.
5. Opportunities for Rapid Innovation
Perhaps one of the most significant benefits of an in-app contact center for Microsoft Teams, is the ability to remain agile and innovative in today’s CX landscape. Bringing a contact center into Teams, and the cloud environment ensures businesses can tap into new functionality whenever they choose.
Business leaders can take advantage of AI innovations, such as Microsoft Dynamics Copilot, integrate their contact center and UCaaS tools with bots, CRM systems, and databases, and even take advantage of incredible automation.
Microsoft’s Digital Contact Center Platform even comes with access to the Power Platform, where organizations can build their own workflows using self-service automation tools. This ensures every business can quickly and consistently optimize their CX strategy with new technologies.
Discovering the Benefits of an In-App Teams Contact Center
Bringing the power of a comprehensive contact center solution into the Microsoft Teams ecosystem can unlock endless benefits for today’s business leaders. While Microsoft’s Digital Contact Center Platform offers a host of valuable tools, from Azure Cloud, to the Power Platform, Nuance Intelligence, and Viva, it can’t offer an “in-app” contact center alone.
To truly unlock the full benefits of a Microsoft Teams contact center, companies need to access the integrations offered by a leading contact center vendor. For instance, the CallTower and Solgari contact center solution for Microsoft Teams unlocks all of the contact center functionality businesses need, and aligns it with the full Microsoft ecosystem.
Empowering businesses to communicate across any inbound and outbound channel, Solgari unifies the UCaaS and CCaaS environments. What’s more, it empowers brands to take advantage of advanced tools, from intelligent skills-based routing, to automation, AI, and in-depth analytics.
