Microsoft caused quite a stir when it announced it would be adding voice channels to Dynamics 365.
The vendor referred to the new offering as an “all-in-one digital contact centre solution”, leaving many wondering if Microsoft is planning a full-blown assault on the customer experience market.
UC Today sat down with Chris Bardon, Chief Software Architect at ComputerTalk, to see how and where Microsoft is positioning the offering.
ComputerTalk’s flagship product is ice Contact Center – an omnichannel contact centre offering that integrates with Microsoft Teams.
Bardon said that, on first view, he doesn’t expect a whole wave of organisations leaving their current contact centres behind for the new Dynamics-based offering.
He expects that it could appeal specifically to businesses that are built to run entirely on Dynamics already.
"I don’t think this is a broad play from Microsoft,” he said. “I think this is very much a product targeted at Dynamics users.
“If you’re a Dynamics customer and your users live and breathe Dynamics, this might make sense, but businesses also need to make sure that Dynamics will give them what they need in a contact centre"
“I think it also depends on buyer expectations. I think the Dynamics offering could do well with businesses that are very CRM-centric and just want to add some very basic contact centre features such as voice.
“Similarly, if you have a company using Dynamics customer records with four people on their help desk, they could probably turn Dynamics voice on and do pretty well, but businesses with specialist contact centres will still need a specialist vendor.”
How Does it Fit with Teams?
An interesting aspect of the news is how the new Dynamics contact centre solution will fit in with a Microsoft software portfolio that includes Teams – which boasts relatively basic CX capabilities and partnerships with a number of CX specialist vendors.
When announcing that voice would be added to Dynamics, Microsoft said that Teams could be embedded into the Dynamics platform but did not go into too much detail on quite how tightly the two would be integrated.
Bardon said that businesses should not underestimate how disintegrated the two platforms actually are.
