While Microsoft Teams counts more than 145 million daily active users wordwide, its own calling plans for companies in search of telephony within Teams seem not to be embraced with the same enthusiasm by companies.
Now, around 70% of organisations using Teams for UCaaS, or planning to do so in the near future, say they’ll probably opt for direct routing.
Among the advantages of Microsoft Teams’ Connect contact centre integration approach, which uses Direct Routing, probably the most remarkable is that it allows customers to use an existing contact centre solution and integrate it with another communication platforms or telephony systems offered by the solution vendor. This means that alternatives such as Cisco phone system, Skype for business and others can be used in a relatively simple and quick way. For companies that use multiple communications and telephony systems and who want to gather these into a single solution for multiple contact centre departments, this is a compelling benefit.
The consistency that is achieved is a benefit but using direct routing to route incoming calls has a large impact in simplifying call centre operations. The connected contact centre uses the same advanced functionalities across all the communication platforms, providing users with these same contact centre functionalities regardless of the system they use.
Another important aspect is that agents can route contact centre calls to any employee within the company, using the Microsoft Teams client. When an external call is routed via SIP trunk to the SBC and then to the contact centre, it is served by a contact centre agent (associated with a Phone System Licence) who can route the call to any Teams user, no matter what kind of licence is associated with that user. This means there is no need to purchase Microsoft E5 or Phone System licences for all the employees.
With the Connect approach call handling differs according to the contact centre integration. When a third party client is used, the contact centre software routes the incoming call to an available agent in the standalone contact centre client using voice, video, chat or screen sharing that the solution offers. From the user-perspective this option does not differ substantially from non-Teams call handling.
In contrast, with Teams client, the contact centre software routes the incoming call to Teams– the agent receives a normal Teams call and manages it via the standard Teams UX. As an option, the solution provider might deliver additional data and functionalities, available through a dedicated Teams app such as the operator’s dashboard. From the user perspective, this option does not differ greatly from a standard Teams call, making it very easy and straightforward for employees to manage incoming contact centre calls.
