1. What kind of impact is MS Teams having on the Customer Engagement landscape right now?
Hans Kramer, Global Head of Marketing at Anywhere365: "Microsoft Teams is disrupting customer engagement, as it creates a hub for companies to connect people both inside and outside a company effectively. "Companies who have already invested in the Microsoft 365 stack can simply leverage that investment, which was probably made from an internal collaboration perspective, for their business communications and customer engagement ecosystem. All of a sudden, they don't need specific architecture and legacy systems for contact centers." "Simply adding intelligence and communications capabilities to their existing Microsoft architecture enables them to route voice and text interactions to anyone, from anywhere and on any channel or device. It will cut costs, speed up customer service resolutions, transform the future of work and upgrade their customer's experiences." Spokesperson for Enghouse: "One sure way to improve your customer engagement is to implement technologies that better serve the customer. With customer journeys becoming even more complicated, Microsoft Teams has removed the barriers to delivering the result the customer is looking for. "Teams can support the level of collaboration needed to solve complex queries by connecting the frontline agents with the middle and back office (showing who is available to seek advice from), allowing agents to complete their jobs successfully. "And with the maturing APIs adding the ability for third parties to join forces and seamlessly integrate to Teams, customers are offered seamless technology experiences using best of breed products built to take care of the job." John Antanaitis, VP, Portfolio Marketing at Vonage: "We have seen a fundamental change in the way businesses communicate and interact with customers, employees and partners.
"We're now in an age where customers (internal and external) expect ultra-fast, seamless, and engaging digital experiences catered to their preferred channel of communication at any given moment.
"With that in mind, while MS Teams is a central hub for communications, customer engagement with Teams can be further enhanced by adding a full calling experience to the solution that enriches the overall experience and speeds communication and collaboration. This includes features such as direct routing, a receptionist console, visual voicemail, and compliant call recordings. "As a result, businesses will be able to use the same platform for all customer interaction needs across all communication channels, and it will integrate seamlessly with customer data in their CRM platform. "The outcome: faster communications, richer collaboration and a more engaging experience for everyone involved." Philipp Beck, CEO of Luware: "Teams is breaking up old contact center silos. With the shift to Teams, organizations are consolidating their old PBX landscape and simplifying their IT infrastructure. "Increasingly, they are also integrating their contact center into the platform. Teams has encouraged the transition towards serving all customer touchpoints in a single platform."
2. What is the opportunity for businesses to transform their contact centre with Teams?
Hans Kramer, Global Head of Marketing at Anywhere365: "There are multiple business opportunities. For those companies already invested in the Microsoft ecosystem, a Teams Contact Center reduces IT costs and simplifies architecture. "Secondly, we see very high adoption rates among agents due to people's familiarity with Microsoft interfaces. This increases productivity. "Security is also an important benefit, e.g. our Teams Contact Center solution is delivered as a platform straight from the Azure cloud. Agents can work from anywhere without security managers having to worry about the safeguarding of data. "Without customer support managers having to worry about omnichannel communications environments, voice and text channels can be handled from a single screen in the Teams client.
"The biggest advantage, however, is that you can move away from a typical contact center scenario and organize customer engagement around the customer. Every Teams-powered user can easily become part of any customer interaction, whether consultative or direct.
Spokesperson for Enghouse: "Microsoft Teams has enabled businesses to shift successfully from on-site, to remote, to now our new normal of hybrid. "When you implement a Teams enabled Enghouse Contact Center you're taking advantage of the best of breed of two world-class systems built to interact seamlessly together." "Incorporating the superior collaboration tools that Teams offers - workplace chat, video meetings, shared file storage, and application integration, with the superior contact center and reception solutions like Enghouse, businesses benefit from a more seamless working environment. "Offering improved worker satisfaction and empowerment ultimately reduces attrition rates, but when required Teams also reduces the time to train and onboard all new hires. "Its cloud-based users can also access anything (files, emails, calendars, or each other), from anywhere, on any device." John Antanaitis, VP, Portfolio Marketing at Vonage: "Teams serves as a hub to which everything else can be connected, opening up many possibilities for custom integrations and development. "As a result, partners like Vonage can use highly augmented communication, collaboration, and contact centre solutions to expand the functionality and usability of Teams. "With enhancements to an already robust product offering, organisations can access premium calling features, SMS and MMS and rich customer data through contact centre and CRM integrations. This allows employees to continue working as they are accustomed to and where they are most productive, without disruption - from anywhere. "By uniting the powerful collaboration benefits of MS Teams working across all company SMEs and internal resources with the external reach of the contact centre and CRM, business transformation efforts take a giant step forward. First-call resolution becomes the norm for customers (not the exception) and everyone benefits." Philipp Beck, CEO of Luware: "There are lots of opportunities. For one, when organizations integrate their contact center into Teams, they get access to the best technologies from Microsoft. "They can use all the different Teams channels – calling, video and screen share to drive customer engagement and, for example, implement web-based, on-demand video sessions. "There is also an opportunity to bring all employees onto a single platform. When all employees are on Teams, customer service agents can easily consult with internal experts, and every employee becomes a potential customer touchpoint."
