This has been a tough year for most businesses across the board. Gyms and movie theaters have been shuttered, and we wait week-by-week to see if daycare is still going to be allowed to stay open. In many places, delivery is the default and not a convenience.
As the conditions of the pandemic make many of the old ways of working redundant, other types of businesses have risen to fill the gap. In some cases, they are witnessing massive growth as people adjust to the new normal.
Microsoft Teams has been one of these beneficiaries over the past eight months, making it possible for many of us to continue working remotely with minimal interruption. As more people and organizations have made the switch to remote working, they are turning to Teams as their main interface for communicating with colleagues and customers outside the confines of the standard platform.
Along with the many unified communications (UC) features available on the standard Teams platform, many organizations have added a voice component in order to make calls out to the telephone network over the PSTN. Since this voice component is not a core service offered by Microsoft, organizations acquire this service through contracting with providers of Direct Routing that facilitate connection between Teams and the phone system.
Adding the Voice Component to Microsoft Teams with Direct Routing
One of the leading players in the Direct Routing (DR) field is US-based CallTower. As a provider of Teams with Direct Routing, they are able to offer their clients the voice component they need within the Teams environment, as well as many of the additional features that are external to Microsoft. With customers in multiple countries and a longtime relationship with Microsoft as a Gold Partner, CallTower has seen explosive growth in their number of sales for Teams Direct Routing.
According to reporting by CallTower, their Native Teams Direct Routing Solution sales through October 2020 increased by 293% over 2019 sales figures.
Clearly COVID-19 played a pivotal role in pushing CallTower’s Teams sales up nearly 300%. I have been calling the rush to find remote solutions “the Great Scramble of 2020”. Not a perfect characterization but it is close enough.
That said, there is still more to this story.
Speaking with CallTower’s Chief Revenue Officer, William Rubio, he sheds some light on a number of fascinating indicators about where we stand in the working world, and where we might be headed.
Where is the Growth Coming From?
While there may be a generational gap issue here (cards on the table I’m in my mid-30s and remember a time before cell phones) most folks that I know will usually opt for the “computer audio” option that many of us have become accustomed to.
However, the PSTN phone line is still the workhorse of business. Similar to email, it works with everyone and isn’t tied to a proprietary platform. These crucial factors are unlikely to change any time soon, and making phone calls remains an essential option for reaching people who find the phone to be more convenient.
This may be because they live in a more rural area that does not have good broadband internet, so the phone still makes for a clearer conversation.
Then there are always going to be the more “traditional” users who frankly are less comfortable with using an app to make their calls and prefer the security, familiarity, and general simplicity of joining the conference call with a DID call in number.
Call centers are, perhaps unsurprisingly, another major group of buyers right now. Interestingly, many of the new purchases have not just come from the enterprises, but also from the SMBs. “It’s a lot of these smaller operations that needed to find a way to keep in touch with their customers but may have been getting by on more traditional methods in the past,” Rubio says.
The numbers back up Rubio’s observation, with CallTower reporting a 31% YoY growth for their call center Direct Routing services.
Growth in Unexpected Corners as Businesses Streamline Operations
Rubio drives home the point that many sectors that we may not think of as the first adopter tech startups etc. are actually making serious strides to bring their workforces into the modern area and work more efficiently to make the most out of their Microsoft licenses.
For organizations that are running the rest of their operations through Microsoft, Rubio says that adding Direct Routing Voice services into Teams helps them to manage everything in one place where they are already adding other layers like their CRM and workforce management apps.
“Everyone is trying to reduce complications now and focus on their core business goals,” he says, explaining that many of his customers are already using Teams to streamline their communications even before adding the voice component. “They’re using it as a real single-pane-of-glass-type UC solution, reducing email and negating the need for the traditional handset to communicate with their colleagues.”
One of the sectors that he sees significant adoption in are construction/manufacturing. Offices there are using Teams to communicate with their people in the field, overcoming the challenge of how to stay in touch with folks who can be pretty hard to reach.
“Before, you would have those people working at a construction site and there was no way for you to get in touch with them unless it was on their mobile device,” explains Rubio, noting that now, employees just download the Teams app.
“Now they have a telephone number from your org, you can instant message with them, check their presence and calendar, and they can connect back and forth. If that individual is no longer in the company, you can just shut it off”
My Thoughts
These features, along with many of the other useful addons that CallTower provides to their customers, sound like good reasons for companies that were already using Microsoft to take advantage of. But to me, the context is a little bit rougher.
We are likely still in for tough and lean times ahead, so the inefficiencies of the old ways of working simply are not going to cut it anymore for businesses that want to remain competitive. For these companies, they have woken up to the fact that they need to not just find short term solutions for staying in business over the past few months.
Now they need to find ways to dramatically improve efficiency, make the most out of their existing investments in technology, and continue to innovate in the years ahead if they hope to stay ahead of their competitors.
For many, being able to add voice to their existing tech stack to do more for their business may be a good place to start.
