All employees working from home – this is often a big challenge, especially in a contact center: employees have to carry a lot of equipment home, set up complicated call forwarding to private phones and in some cases contact centers remained completely closed this spring. The Corona lockdown has shown that it is time to replace the traditional telephone system (PBX) with a more flexible solution, for example with Microsoft Teams.
Microsoft's leading solution enables employees to do more than just collaborate efficiently. It is a powerful communication platform that also makes customer service efficient and easy from anywhere. Reception, main number, internal or external helpdesk, service hotlines or even complex contact centers – Teams together with powerful add-ons make it possible. And how do you replace the old PBX? Philipp Beck, CEO from Luware, gives valuable insights and recommendations from his experiences with customer projects.
“The technical replacement of the PBX with Teams is relatively easy. The real challenge is the organizational change,” says Philipp Beck. “It is a completely different approach to internal and external communication that is a lot more than just the function set of a telephony system." Therefore, you need to get all your stakeholders to the table from the beginning, including users, process owners, management and the staff association. It is important to establish a common understanding of why this change is necessary, how it will be carried out, and of course how it will change the way that the stakeholders do their work – because ultimately, the user satisfaction strongly impacts customer satisfaction.
Philipp Beck, CEO of Luware
With its Response Groups and Auto Attendant Call Queues, Teams offers some built-in routing functionality. However, they fall short when it comes to customer service. Service providers like Luware offer the necessary add-ons to fill in the missing functionality, e.g. automatic call distribution to teams and service lines, easily manageable, custom call flows, extensive reporting for call volumes and first contact resolution, call transfers for receptionists and attendants, and even skill-based routing for contact centers. “It is important that these third-party applications can cover the customer service requirements without building new silos next to Microsoft Teams. They must be built directly on Microsoft Teams for you to fully leverage the Microsoft platform and maximize your investment in it,” emphasizes Philipp.
Philipp Beck, CEO of Luware