Microsoft Teams lacks native contact center functionality. While it has some similar features (shared voicemail, call queuing, etc.), it falls woefully short of a full-featured contact center.
Thankfully, you can seamlessly integrate your own software directly into Teams. This guide explains what Microsoft Teams contact center integration is, its benefits, and how to set it up.
What Is Microsoft Teams Contact Center Integration?
Bright Pattern utilizes open APIs to effortlessly integrate with Teams. Integrating Microsoft Teams into your call center software can improve the efficiency of communication, the smoothness of internal business communication, and allow your call center to bring in subject matter experts from around the contact center.
Without seamless Teams integration, your unified communications platform will be separate from your CCaaS, which creates friction with context switching for agents.
Why Integrate MS Teams With Your Contact Center?
Microsoft Teams is rapidly becoming the central hub of modern workplaces. Collaboration and communication thrive in a central digital space where employees work together directly.
Because of this, companies are finding that it’s not just technical staff who need a central workspace, but everyone else too.
Teams has become one of the most popular tools for this purpose. Thanks to Microsoft’s dominance in workforce technology (Azure, Office, Dynamics, etc.), many companies saw Teams as the logical choice in unified comms.
From there, the path to full contact center integration with Teams was gradual. Many firms used Teams as a separate comms platform, before creating apps directly on it. As Teams grew into their central digital hub, full integration followed naturally as a next step.
Many firms are content leaving unified communications (UC) platforms like Teams separate from their contact center. And while that’s fine, they miss out on key advantages:
- Agents can see the online status of anyone in their organization. This helps when seamlessly routing callers to subject matter experts.
- Collaboration tools in Teams make it easier for agents to work with one another. Features like video calling, screen sharing, file sending, and others bridge communication gaps left by your CCaaS solution.
- Agents can seamlessly transfer calls to anyone in the Teams directory.
Integration with other UC platforms offers similar features, but Microsoft’s certification program guarantees a seamless workflow.
How to Integrate Microsoft Teams With Your Call Center
To integrate CCaaS with MS Teams, clients simply need to find a vendor who has already integrated it with their platform with an API. Otherwise, you’ll have to integrate manually and pay for time-consuming and expensive professional services.
How Difficult Is the Integration Process?
Your organization’s size will determine how you integrate your contact center with Teams. In any case, you’ll likely need to collaborate with Teams experts, either to assist or to handle the process completely.
What Is a Microsoft Teams Call Center Environment Like for Agents?
A CCaaS that’s fully integrated with Microsoft Teams simplifies communication. In YMCA’s case, Teams integration via Bright Pattern was a game changer. Their agents seamlessly connect customers to subject matter experts and solve issues faster than ever.
Wrapping Up
Integrating Microsoft Teams into your contact center can supercharge your CCaaS’ feature set.
Teams provides seamless agent communication, powerful native applications, and better customer care overall. And when Microsoft releases Power Model, providers can create CCaaS apps directly on Azure infrastructure.
Teams integration is part of a larger trend combining CCaaS with UC. As the lines blur between integrations, contact centers—and customer service as a whole—become more effective and efficient.
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