To say that this has been a year of change would be an understatement. The COVID-19 crisis has seen companies fundamentally alter the way that they run their organizations as they make the shift from showing up at the office to working from home.
So how have organizations been coping with the sudden need for change?
Probably the best example out there is the story of the transition from the PBX towards telephony with Microsoft Teams Voice.
Going Remote Demands Greater Flexibility
Back when work was someplace that you went, the PBX was fine. Not perfect, but good enough.
However, in the COVID era, we now understand that work is something that you do and can be done from pretty much anywhere. Therefore, the tools that we use need to be as flexible as we are. Organizations that are operating a call center, or basically any other kind of operation that requires employees to pick up a ringing phone, must enable their team to work from any location without interruption.
In practice, this means:
- Making it easy for employees to start working without having to ship them a ton of extra equipment
- Making adding or removing users a simple process without involving multiple layers of IT
- Ensuring that the solution meets your security and compliance requirements while making it easy to manage costs
Using Microsoft Teams coupled with customer service add-ons lets employees take calls and then action without missing a beat from right inside their Teams application.
Use cases span from receptionists taking and transferring calls, to internal and external helpdesks and service hotlines, and even to contact center agents. Gone are the days of the brick telephone on their table that ties them to a physical location.
So, what should organizations consider and how should they think about the transition from their PBX to Microsoft Teams?
How to transition from your PBX to Microsoft Teams
Looking for insights, UC Today spoke with Philipp Beck, CEO at Luware, on how they advise customers to make the transition effectively and efficiently.
Luware is a leading provider for customer service solutions that are seamlessly integrated into Microsoft Teams. In close partnership with Microsoft, Luware has been developing customer service software for UC platforms for over 10 years.
1. Embrace the Change in Culture
“The challenge of replacing the PBX with Teams is not so much the technical change but rather the organizational change,” says Beck. “It is a completely different approach to internal and external communication that is a lot more than just the function set of a telephony system. With the current situation, the necessity for organizations to establish a more dynamic solution has never been so obvious.”
Beck is convinced that you need to get all your stakeholders to the table from the beginning, including users, process owners, management and the workers’ council.
Factors including understanding of why this change is being made, how it will be carried out, and of course how it will change the way that they do their work will all impact your users’ satisfaction.
2. Establish an Overarching Communication Strategy
“Break up your silos and see telephony as one part of your overall communication strategy rather than scattering different
functionalities over multiple tools,” encourages Beck. “With the transition to Teams you have to opportunity to build your business on a powerful platform that interconnects and empowers departments, employees and customers.”
He advises to make a business process analysis that asks: Which systems do you have in place now? Which use cases must be covered with the telephony solution in the future?
“Many of our customers want Microsoft Teams as their comprehensive calling solution to distribute, take, forward calls, and to get a detailed reporting of it all,” summarizes Beck, adding that, “With Microsoft Teams as part of your overall communication strategy you can fully benefit from your central communication platform and the entire Microsoft ecosystem, e.g. the out-of-the-box integration to other Microsoft applications, the use of Azure Communication Service, and future automation and integrations. This allows you to use Microsoft Teams not only in your internal communication but bring chat, voice, video and even screensharing to the interactions with your customers.”
3. Fill in the Gaps of Microsoft Teams
Microsoft Teams is one of the leading UC solutions, especially if an organization has a Microsoft strategy. But it still depends on third–party suppliers to fill in for certain missing functionalities and components.
With its Response Groups and Auto Attendant Call Queues, Teams offers some built-in routing functionality. However, they fall short when companies require more granular routing and call flow options as well as detailed reporting of call volumes, lost calls, first contact resolution, etc.
This means that organizations need to work with service providers like Luware for routing their calls and filling in other business need gaps. These can be customer service add-ons for specific functionalities for specific employees, user groups and use cases, e.g. receptionists, automatic call distribution, routing, contact center.
“It is important is that these third-party applications can cover the customer service requirements without building a new silo next to Microsoft Teams. They must be built directly on Microsoft Teams for you to fully leverage the Microsoft platform and maximize your investment in it,” emphasizes Beck.
Looking to the Benefits of Change
“Yes, transitioning from your old PBX to Teams is a change — and it’s an inevitable one. Doing nothing is not an option,” says Beck, noting that:
“It sounds grim at first but it’s actually fun with lots of benefits down the road for all the stakeholders: a modern tool for employees that allows them to work from anywhere, powerful add-ons for various use cases, simplified IT infrastructure and an extremely powerful communication platform for your customer interactions”
Making changes is never easy, but the past six months have shown us that we do not always get to decide when change comes. All we can do is try to be ready for it and use it as an opportunity to create a flexible communications system for the future.
