In March 2025, Microsoft launched a simple tool for small businesses running Microsoft 365: a chat widget for their website that dropped customer messages straight into a Teams channel, so a support team never had to leave the app they were already living in. Brenna Robinson, then General Manager for Microsoft 365 and Copilot in the small and medium business unit, introduced it with some enthusiasm on Microsoft's own blog.
Today we're excited to take that customer experience to a new level with the introduction of live chat in Microsoft Teams, a faster and more engaging way for you to connect with your customers.
That excitement didn't last. According to Message Center notice MC1449174, published on 7 August, Microsoft is retiring the feature entirely by October, citing a need to "focus investments on newer customer engagement and communication experiences."
Related Reading
- Microsoft's Weekly Copilot Engagement Now Matches Outlook and Teams
- Microsoft Teams to Block External Bots Automatically as AI Notetaker Crackdown Hardens
- Microsoft Scout Agent: Autopilots, Teams AI and M365 at Build 2026
The Customer Connect Rebrand That Didn't Survive a Quarter
In April 2026, Microsoft renamed Live Chat to Customer Connect and rolled it out globally, expanding language support to 26 languages and adding appointment booking directly from the widget. Microsoft said at the time that the rename carried no functional changes, just a name better aligned with how customers actually used it. The rollout completed by the end of May. Ten weeks later, Microsoft announced it was shutting the whole thing down.
