Microsoft Teams has announced new solutions for retail workers to simplify operations and enhance customer experiences.
The latest products and features include updates to team communication and collaboration, retail store operations, and business management.
The innovations will be showcased at the annual National Retail Federation (NRF), which takes place between January 14–16.
Team Communication and Collaboration
Microsoft has released the capability to route announcements to frontline teams based on their location, department, and job role. This feature will be generally available in March this year.
Frontline teamwork has been bolstered through the addition of auto-generated roles and department tagging, making it easier to pass information to the right person at the right time. Tags can be configured for frontline workers via the Teams Admin Center when it enters public preview in February 2024.
Answers from Q&A conversations in Viva Engage within Teams are available in communities as of this month, enabling frontline workers to more easily obtain the information they need.
From February 2024, employee engagement can be monitored to see the impact it has on business performance. Adding network analytics to Viva Engage in Teams will provide AI-powered theme extraction and employee retention metrics to improve insights into workforce dynamics and lead to more informed decision-making.
Teams’ Walkie Talkie users will have the option to automatically listen to incoming transmissions from their pinned Teams channels, allowing them to be better informed without needing to switch between channels. This feature will be generally available by the end of this month.
Frontline workers can now use any generic wired headset for instant team communication on Android devices, so long as the headsets have a control button to play, pause, accept, and decline calls. This cost-saving feature will be generally available from February 2024.
Retail Store Operations
New features for frontline team workers include the ability to set shift availability based on specific dates, which will enable them greater freedom to manage their individual schedules. It will become available to teams this month.
Currently, in public preview and due to be generally available in March 2024, admins will be able to deploy shifts at scale for their teams through the Teams Admin Centre. Admins are also gaining the ability to identify schedule owners and create uniform scheduling groups and time-off reasons that will be the same for all frontline teams.
