Microsoft Teams is rapidly becoming the central “work hub” for many hybrid, remote, and modern workforces. In an environment where employees can collaborate and communicate “anywhere,” a central digital environment is the key to synergizing teams. As we move deeper into this new age of work, we’re discovering it’s not just back-end employees in need of this synchronised environment but the entire workforce. Bringing CX or contact centre technology into Microsoft Teams empowers agents to achieve better results for end-users and customers. With a contact centre and in Microsoft Teams together, businesses can finally discover the true potential of Microsoft’s digital solution. With all of the features and functionality that's part of the MS Teams solution, many organizations struggle to leverage the best fit for their CC. Fortunately, there are great partners like Five9 and Enabled UC that can provide best practice recommendations during a deployment of MS Teams. I spoke to Kevin Kieller of Enable UC, as well as Allen Miller, Beatrice Casanova, and Tim Sherman from Five9, to learn more about how the Five9 environment is empowering a new future for contact centre experiences with Microsoft Teams.
Why are Companies Choosing to Integrate CX with Teams?
Teams blends seamlessly into any existing Microsoft investment, unlocking new levels of collaboration, content sharing, and creativity. However, it can only accomplish so much on its own. Even with Microsoft introducing various solutions like Teams calling plans and Dynamics call centres, business leaders will struggle to get everything they need from Microsoft alone. Integrating pre-existing CX solutions with Teams through a certified vendor like Five9 allows companies to access more of the functionality they need from a leading solution, in a familiar environment. As Kevin told me: “People want to get as much as they can out of the Microsoft ecosystem today. Ultimately, when people choose Teams as their central hub for work, they end up outgrowing the functionality it offers for a range of reasons. It’s at this point they contact us at Enable UC and the team at Five9. With Five9, agents can stay within their familiar contact centre environment while experts do the same working within Teams..” Allen went on to say:
“With CX and Microsoft Teams aligned, everyone benefits. Customers can get straight through to an agent who has the tools required to get a subject matter expert on the line. There’s less agent frustration and attrition, lower costs for businesses, and higher customer satisfaction”
Beatrice also noted that combining CX environments and Microsoft Teams means agents in the back office can have “offline calls” with subject matter experts whenever they need to, for various administrative and back-end tasks.
How do Companies Approach the CCaaS Solution Teams?
With 270 million monthly active users, Microsoft Teams has quickly become one of the most popular tools for the new age of work. With Microsoft already accounting for a significant portion of modern workforce technology, from Azure, to Dynamics, and Microsoft Office, many business leaders saw embracing Teams as the most natural choice for a new age of collaboration. I was interested to find out whether companies were already using PBX solutions within Teams before they decided to integrate a CCaaS solution, or how the transition worked. Kevin told me that unified communications has always been about connecting things that make sense. “From our perspective, companies generally choose Microsoft Teams for collaboration and chat, then move into meetings with internal calling, before gradually upgrading into PSTN calling. As the investment in Teams grows, they start to bring in applications, and Teams becomes the hub where work gets done. Eventually, it starts to make sense to integrate the contact centre.” Kevin noted that Five9 has recognised, in most environments, agents and knowledge workers are two separate user profiles. Bringing those two profiles together to engage knowledge workers and subject matter experts can be a powerful strategy for a lot of business leaders. Beatrice added that Microsoft Teams already has a huge footprint in many organisations and that at Five9, they see a lot of customers already in the midst of planning Teams migrations looking for CX solutions. “They come to us half-way through the migration process and suddenly realise they need to access the contact centre too.”
What Do People Want from a CX-Enhanced Teams Experience?
Contact centre and CX solutions are rarely a one-size-fits-all landscape for many businesses. However, we’ve definitely seen a number of trends emerging in the last couple of years when it comes to customer contact. I asked the experts what businesses are usually looking for when adding CX and contact center tools to Teams. “People generally want a lot of full-featured and easy-to-use solutions with omnichannel offerings built-in. We’re seeing a lot of demand for advanced contact centre solutions these days. While people do want to replace what they’ve got, they’re also looking for more enhanced features. Beatrice noted international coverage is a strong selling point for Five9, alongside AI, virtual agents, and omnichannel environments. “Since we’re not a closed-wall environment, we can integrate with a host of different tools and build these more advanced contact centres for our customers.” According to Kevin, a lot of his company’s clients start with Teams and continue to build up from there. They realise Teams isn’t providing the right functionality on its own, then begin looking for more feature-rich and extensive solutions.
“Teams by itself doesn’t offer omnichannel, SMS, or the excellent reliability you can get from an industrial-strength solution like Five9. People often get disappointed when trying to use Teams on its own”
How Complex is the Implementation Process?
As more companies continue to embrace the power of Microsoft Teams and CX solutions together, I was interested to learn more about the approach business leaders take when implementing these technologies. According to Allen, there are some differences in the implementation path, depending on whether you’re dealing with a commercial-type strategy with under 100 seats, or an enterprise environment with 1000s of seats. “Sometimes, the company might have technical experts come in and we work with them. We’re pretty flexible and have MS Teams Ddirect R routing partners who can come in and help with the process, or we can take over more of the process on their behalf.” Kevin, whose company generally deals with large enterprises, told me his customers generally need access to people with specific expertise on the team. “They can access this expertise from Five9 or a partner, but either way, a partner is generally the best way to improve your chances of success.” Notably, Kevin also said that while many people think the cloud automatically makes implementing CX into the Teams environment easier, it has its challenges too. The cloud is an extremely agile environment, which means the pieces companies are trying to integrate will often change at a rapid pace, making the demand for expertise even greater. Beatrice said when Five9 qualifies customers for Teams integrations, they start by figuring out what kind of route the customer wants to take, like Five9 Teams SIP connectivity developed with Microsoft, or a direct routing solution from a certified vendor. “Whatever route the customer wants to take, we’re on-hand to help every step of the way.”
