Contact centres reimagined: Making every employee a Microsoft Teams agent
More often than not, contact centre capabilities are reserved for main service desks. However, recent trends are creating new opportunities to expand these capabilities to the wider workforce, using Microsoft Teams as the vehicle. Bart Scheffer explores.
The lines between unified communications and contact centre are becoming increasingly blurred as businesses streamline their tech stacks. But while consolidation feels like the right approach, the implementation, vendor selection, and various other challenges make it easier said than done.
So, it may please businesses to know that there is one convenient, obvious – perhaps too obvious – solution right under their noses: leveraging Microsoft Teams as a contact centre.
Teams is a natural contact centre choice for a few reasons:
· Over 50% of organisations are already standardised on it
· It already comes with call centre-like features (e.g., call queueing, shared voicemail)
· It’s accessible around the world
Using Teams in this way also inspires a new way of thinking. If everyone in the business is on Teams, then why not spread contact centre capabilities across the entire workforce? By empowering every employee with the tools that agents might use, businesses can improve efficiency across all functions and, ultimately, customer satisfaction.
But since Teams is not a fully functional contact centre, businesses also need to consider how they will plug those gaps and get the most out of their Microsoft Teams investments.
Case in point: Voca by AudioCodes
Voca by AudioCodes champions the idea of extending customer experience capabilities beyond the service desk to other internal business lines (e.g., IT help desk, travel desk, sales team). In doing so, employees will have the tools they need to do their jobs better, which is all part of providing a good customer experience.
Voca helps businesses include all Teams users into the service workflow and spread various AI-driven customer service capabilities across departments. It gives employees access to a unique combination of conversational AI, contact centre, and voice networking technologies that fill the gap between Teams contact centre capabilities and premium contact centre vendors.
Through Voca’s automated call assistance, voice-activated chatbots, and conversational IVR, businesses can enhance their communication efficiency.
Packaged in a one-screen, AI-first contact centre experience, Voca helps to improve responsiveness, remove department silos, and build connections among employees.
Voca demonstrates how extending contact centre capabilities to the wider workforce fosters a responsive, adaptable, and empowered workplace. Distributing these tools enhances issue resolution and knowledge-sharing into every corner of the organisation and allows employees to work smarter, ultimately driving success and satisfaction.
Work with Westcon and AudioCodes to deliver contact centre capabilities across your customers’ workforces. With minimal investment on your part, we’ll handle the technical know-how and IT infrastructure, while helping you unleash the full potential of Teams for your customers. Find out more.
