Looking forward to 2024, one of the biggest themes that organizations are talking about is how to leverage their technology investments to do more with their current levels of resources.
Speaking with CallTower’s Chief Revenue Officer, William Rubio, he tells UC Today that the market has matured in the past two years.
“More and more organizations have transitioned to more robust cloud-based UCaaS solutions that have allowed them to centralize more of their operations onto their Microsoft Teams environment,” explains Rubio. “They now have their conferencing, presence, IM, and other services all on one platform that their employees can use from the office, at home, or on the road.”
“Decision makers want to know how to squeeze more value out of their investments and help their teams increase efficiency,” he says. “Everyone is talking about how Microsoft Co-Pilot is going to take this all to the next level with their employees doing more with the same resources, working more efficiently, automating rote tasks. Organizations understand that if they can simplify their communications, they can gain more value. This means tightening up operations and stimulating growth.”
In his conversations with customers, Rubio says that the next step that they are looking at is enabling voice for their Teams.
“The leadership that we are speaking with understands the value in having all their communication components all in one place,” he says. “They know that being able to cut out extra steps when it comes to reaching someone quickly or looping them into a call can save valuable time and push growth.”
Some of the uses that customers are seeing, according to Rubio, include:
- Connecting with colleagues quickly over a phone call or instant messaging as opposed to email for faster answers, letting them get back to customers or prospects faster.
- Reducing the complexity of adding people to a call from separate solutions
- Streamlining connectivity across hybrid working environments
While there are plenty of clear advantages to enabling voice for Teams, Rubio does say that implementing this change can come with some challenges.
Challenges to Enabling Voice for Microsoft Teams
Like most difficulties in implementing new changes within a company, the challenges are mostly human and organizational. The actual technical enablement is the easy part.
Opposition to New Services
Despite the convenience of enabling voice for Teams, some members of your organization may not want to add another software application for their voice. Given the sheer number of UCaaS solutions, plus email and everything else, people are in a notification overload.
With all of the pings and beeps, it can be hard to actually be productive. So for many, a new service is just one more place to look when they simply want to communicate.
Who Owns Voice?
Voice is not always owned by one party, so making the decision to enable voice in Teams may be a bit complicated. In some cases, IT owns voice as part of the overall tech stack, but it can differ from organization to organization, where some others may have voice owned by another department.
Having more stakeholders, each with their own priorities and preferences can draw out even an easy decision. Getting them to work together and get to the final decision can be difficult.
So what is the right way forward for overcoming some of these challenges?
Understand Stakeholder Needs and Get Buy In
A couple of tips for a more effective implementation of enabling voice for Teams.
