Advanced Microsoft Teams features come in a variety of flavors. As the comprehensive platform has evolved, Microsoft has introduced countless tools for better collaboration, productivity, and customer engagement.
Today’s business leaders can leverage Teams for virtually every type of communication. Whether you’re hoping to synchronize remote and hybrid workers, align field employees, or enhance customer service, Microsoft Teams can do it all.
As business leaders continue to search for ways to unify the UCaaS and CCaaS landscapes, Teams is quickly emerging as the ultimate all-in-one productivity app. Today, we’re looking at some of the most advanced Microsoft Teams features you can use for customer engagement.
Advanced Microsoft Teams Features for Customer Engagement
Advanced Microsoft Teams features intended to boost customer service, and engagement include everything from in-built tools to apps, integrations, and add-ons. Some of the following features may incur an additional subscription fee or cost.
1. Microsoft Teams Contact Center Integrations
While Microsoft offers its “digital contact center platform,” connecting Teams, Nuance conversational IVR, Dynamics 365, and more, integrations are still the best way to align UCaaS and CCaaS with Teams. Microsoft offers a variety of certified contact center solutions for Teams.
These solutions provide direct access to many crucial features a contact center needs within the Teams environment. The connectors build on the cloud voice, call queuing, and auto attendant capabilities already within Teams, with more advanced solutions.
If you want to access advanced Microsoft Teams features specifically for the contact center, choosing a CCaaS integration could be the perfect solution. Depending on your needs, you can link your contact center using Direct Routing or Operator Connect.
2. Advanced Microsoft Teams Features: Call Queue and Auto Attendant
If your needs for advanced Microsoft Teams features in the contact center are relatively simple, the integrated call queue and auto-attendant features are excellent. You can easily manage call queues and attendant settings within Teams, setting custom policies for callers.
Users can set up business hours greetings, after-hours, and holiday greetings for their auto attendant to help connect with customers. Plus, there are various call queuing sessions, with on-hold music, voicemail, and welcome greetings.
It’s even possible to check and monitor voicemail in Microsoft Teams. All you need to do is click on the “Calls” tab and select “History” followed by “Voicemail.”
3. Microsoft Teams and Dynamics 365
Connecting your contact center to Teams isn’t the only way to boost the advanced Microsoft Teams features available for customer engagement. Microsoft also offers a native integration with Dynamics 365, its comprehensive ERP and CRM solution.
The native integration allows users to install Dynamics 365 as a native app within Teams, so users can rapidly access and collaborate on customer profiles. You can also use the Teams integration to chat with agents within Dynamics 365 or make and receive calls.
The complete integration is excellent for boosting employee and customer engagement, with direct access to insights, contextual suggestions, and automation tools. Plus, users can leverage valuable activity tracking within the Teams and Dynamics environments.
4. Automation with Power Automate
Keeping customers engaged throughout the buyer journey requires companies to implement efficient, streamlined processes. The faster employees can complete tasks like sending out marketing emails, following up with customers, and creating profiles, the more effective they become.
Integrated with Teams, Power Automate allows companies to leverage workflow automation’s benefits for customer service and sales agents. There are templates available for automating specific alerts and notifications and numerous customization options.
Companies can even utilize Power Automate alongside workload management apps, like Planner, for task management. This helps to keep everyone in your workforce on the same page when it comes to serving customers and increasing sales.
5. Advanced Microsoft Teams features: Live Transcription
Taking notes during customer conversations is often crucial but can also force agents to divert their attention from the discussion. Live transcription and recording tools within Microsoft Teams ensure employees can stay focused while improving the clarity of discussions.
Teams can automatically generate transcriptions of meetings in real-time, which appear alongside the video, complete with each speaker’s name. These transcriptions make it easier to create call records, which users can revisit when personalizing a customer interaction in future.
Plus, with a Dynamics 365 integration, users can automatically upload notes to customer records. With Copilot in the future, companies can automatically summarize meetings using generative AI solutions on both Dynamics and Teams.
6. Meeting Recaps
Speaking of summarizing meetings, Microsoft also provides access to intelligent meeting recaps in Teams. This is an excellent tool for any agent or professional who needs to dive into the details of a meeting for note-taking or follow-up purposes.
To access a meeting recap, simply click the “chat” icon in the sidebar of the Teams app, then look for the title of the finished meeting. The recap window will include the chat text, files shared, notes taken, and a recording or transcription.
With Teams Premium, users can leverage AI-generated notes, insights into meeting speakers, and more from their Teams calendar.
7. Microsoft Teams Speaker Coach
Perfect for sales teams and customer engagement employees alike, the Microsoft Teams speaker coach helps to guide users towards more meaningful conversations. The AI-driven solution, previously known as “Presenter Coach,” provides real-time feedback and suggestions.
When turned on, the system will offer insightful guidance to employees, helping them to engage customers better and drive valuable action. Plus, at the end of a conversation, the Speaker Coach sends the employee a report only they can see.
The report evaluates presentations via Meetings and Microsoft Teams webinars based on metrics like speaking pace, repetitive language, and intonation.
8. Shared Channels (Teams Connect)
Introduced in 2022, Microsoft’s “Teams Connect” feature allows users to share channels with anyone, inside or outside their organization. For companies searching for advanced Microsoft Teams features for customer engagement, this is a great way to get more collaborators involved in a project.
With Teams, companies can invite customers to join their channels for comprehensive demonstrations or onboarding sessions. You can also align your colleagues with external vendors or suppliers to collaborate in real time rather than using email.
The shared channels option could be precious for B2B businesses, where a strategy for ongoing customer success is often essential to brand loyalty.
9. Apps and Integrations
While most of the advanced Microsoft Teams features available for customer engagement come built into the platform, you can extend your experience further with apps. The AppSource market is brimming with valuable tools for sales, service, and marketing teams.
Options range from ChurnZero for Teams, which provides insights into valuable customer information, to Live chat solutions for customer service. There’s also the option to integrate your CRM tools and sales systems directly into the Teams ecosystem.
Microsoft even offers a few of its dedicated integrations, such as Microsoft Customer Insights, which pulls information directly from Dynamics 365.
10. Advanced Microsoft Teams Features for Presentations
Perfect for sales and service teams, Microsoft Teams’ advanced features for presentations make it easy to deliver valuable information to customers in a range of formats. Companies can share PowerPoint presentations live through Teams, with annotation capabilities.
Plus, there are various “Presenter mode” options to choose from. For instance, the “Standout mode” replaces the background behind a user with the content they’re presenting. The “Reporter mode” places content above their right shoulder, similar to a TV report.
There’s even the option to showcase your video content and presentation side-by-side.
11. Co-Browsing in Teams
Speaking of presenting content to customers within Teams, there are also other ways companies can boost audience engagement with Microsoft features. If you use the Microsoft Teams and Dynamics 365 integration, you can access co-browsing within Teams.
This means agents can start a co-browsing or screen-sharing session with customers instantly. Agents can interact with a customer’s web browser in real time, helping them troubleshoot problems and providing step-by-step guidance.
If you want a more advanced co-browsing experience, you can also integrate specialist apps for the service into the Teams environment.
12. Advanced Microsoft Teams features: Virtual Appointments
Intended for B2B companies, the “Virtual Appointments” app in Microsoft Teams makes it easy to schedule crucial conversations with customers. You can create branded virtual appointments with a customizable waiting room for your virtual attendees.
Microsoft Teams Premium users can also easily monitor live and upcoming appointments with a dedicated “queue view.” Plus, there’s an app where users can manage their schedules, see appointment analytics, and track individual and departmental metrics.
There are even insights into no-shows, wait times, and trends at an individual and departmental level. Plus, organizational-level analytics are available for entire teams.
13. Microsoft Teams Bots and Tabs
Bots and Tabs on Microsoft Teams enhance customer engagement by improving employee experiences and productivity. With bots, companies can create AI-powered solutions that instantly deliver information to users at the touch of a button.
Bots can scan through knowledgebase and FAQ articles to quickly surface information for agents during customer conversations. Similarly, tabs allow employees to organize their Teams experience, with access to all the resources and features they need to serve customers.
Users can create tabs for Microsoft Dynamics 365 or other CRM tools, bookmark information, and personalize the “my dashboard” space with unique insights and metrics.
14. Advanced Microsoft Teams features: Call quality monitoring
Part of creating a truly engaging customer experience is ensuring every conversation with your customers lives up to expectations. In both video and audio chats, it’s essential to be able to track the health and consistency of your calls.
Microsoft Teams’ integrated “call health” features provide an insight into the technical status of your network, both historically and in real-time. You can monitor issues with sending content to customers, packet loss, and latency.
Plus, valuable tools are available for troubleshooting potential problems so you can rapidly fix any issues your team members might have in conversations.
15. Viva Integrations for Teams
Microsoft’s Viva employee engagement platform integrates directly with Teams to help companies empower and optimize their workforce. There are numerous components to the Viva ecosystem, covering everything from workplace analytics to goal setting and management.
Viva even has an integrated “Insights” tool, which provides valuable recommendations to employees about improving their productivity. Additionally, there’s a Viva Sales solution for Teams, which helps to eliminate manual data entry so sellers can focus on customer engagement.
With Viva, users can access more advanced Microsoft Teams features for employee empowerment, efficiency, and workflow optimization.
16. Microsoft Teams Copilot
Although Copilot has yet to be fully released throughout the Microsoft ecosystem at the time of writing, it could be a powerful tool for customer engagement. The generative AI solution aims to enhance productivity and performance across all aspects of the business environment.
With Copilot integrated into Microsoft Teams chat, phone calls, and Microsoft Dynamics 365, employees can access a comprehensive AI assistant. The solution summarizes calls in real time, drafts notes during conversations, and highlights action points in discussions.
Copilot can help users consistently engage customers with automatically drafted email and message responses.
Using Advanced Microsoft Teams Features for Customer Engagement
The advanced Microsoft Teams features outlined above represent only a small fraction of what customer service teams can do with Teams. As the platform continues to evolve into a powerful toolkit for both employee and customer experience, the opportunities are endless.
With native Teams features, apps, and integrations, companies worldwide can unify their teams, delight customers, and differentiate their brands.
