The Contact Center as a Service (CCaaS) industry is becoming increasingly competitive, with many players vying for dominance. Microsoft's recent entry into this space with the Microsoft Dynamics Contact Center adds a competitor to the mix. How does this latest offering stack up against established solutions like Luware Nimbus? Read on to find out.
The Microsoft Dynamics 365 Contact Center is Microsoft’s latest value proposition when it comes to customer experience. Launched on July 1, 2024, the “copilot-first” contact center is a standalone CCaaS solution that combines Nuance routing technology, generative AI capabilities and smart self-service features. The solution is built on Microsoft Azure. Unlike Dynamics 365 Customer Service, which is built on Microsoft Dynamics 365, the Microsoft Dynamics 365 Contact Center is detached from the Microsoft CRM and can integrate with any CRM or ERP's. It also offers omnichannel capabilities with customers having the option to engage across voice, SMS, chat Email and social media apps. The solution emphasizes generative AI with pre-built copilots for digital channels to facilitate personalized conversations. It provides a comprehensive 360-degree view of customer sentiment through advanced sentiment analysis, translation and transcription, and supports users with conversation summaries and response suggestions. Tom Arbuthnot, co-founder of Empowering. Cloud and Microsoft MVP, sums it up well: “Microsoft is currently fixated on AI. Their focus is on 'our AI for the contact center' rather than 'our contact center offerings as a whole.”
A contact center built on the Azure cloud is nothing new, and Luware Nimbus is an established and certified M365 third-party solution built natively for the Microsoft cloud that offers the same hyper-scalability and reliability. As a smaller vendor, Luware Nimbus can also provide customers with faster and better support to ensure a smooth deployment. Unlike Microsoft Dynamics Contact Center, which is a separate application, Luware Nimbus is fully integrated with Microsoft Teams. This integration means you have a single platform for all interactions, whether with internal employees or external customers. Users don’t require an additional client. Luware Nimbus also boasts superior audio quality, thanks to its seamless integration with Microsoft Teams, ensuring to clear and reliable conversations for both agents and customers. Luware Nimbus is also very easy to use and configure. The solution can be set up in under an hour. All administrative settings can be done within a single web-based Administrator portal. Because Luware Nimbus is also fully integrated into Microsoft Azure, it offers access to the same state-of-the art technology such as sentiment analysis and chatbots. However, Luware Nimbus prioritizes being a user-first contact center rather than a co-pilot-first solution. This approach ensures that users have all the tools they need to deliver exceptional service, focusing on a superior user and customer experience and using AI only where it adds value. While Microsoft Dynamics Contact Center relies on Dataverse for data synchronization to fully enable its contact center functionalities, especially its copilot features. Luware does not require persisting customer data to leverage capabilities like intelligent routing or AI-processing. This distinction is crucial to consider, especially for companies that have not fully invested in a Microsoft data strategy or face specific compliance challenges. Without Dataverse, organizations may find limitations in leveraging the full capabilities of Microsoft Dynamics Contact Center, including potential difficulties with data residency, security, and integration. In contrast, Luware Nimbus offers a more streamlined approach, eliminating the need for complex data synchronization processes and potentially simplifying the overall data management landscape, while also providing greater flexibility in terms of compliance and data governance.
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Microsoft Dynamics Contact Center |
Luware Nimbus |
| Hosting Platform | Microsoft Azure | Microsoft Azure |
| Solution | Standalone solution | Native Microsoft Teams application |
| Modalities | Voice, Chat, Email, SMS, Social Media | Voice, Video, Chat, Email, External tasks |
| AI | Uses artificial intelligence (AI) and natural language processing (NLP) to automate tasks, provide insights, and personalize interactions | Uses Microsoft Cognitive Services and Azure Bot Service to enable speech recognition, text-to-speech, and chatbot functionality |
| Routing | Supports omnichannel routing, skill-based routing, and intelligent routing based on customer data and preferences | Supports skill-based routing, priority routing, and overflow routing based on agent availability and workload |
| Integration | Works with any CRM built on the Power Platform, other CRMs need to be integrated via Power Automate | Integrates natively with Microsoft Teams, Dynamics 365, Azure, Office 365 and more. |
| Analytics | Enables real-time and historical analytics, dashboards, and reports for measuring and improving contact center performance | Enables real-time and historical analytics, dashboards, and reports for measuring and improving contact center performance |
| IVR | Provides tools for creating and managing interactive voice response (IVR) menus, chatbots, and voice bots | Provides tools for creating and managing IVR menus, complex workflows, chatbots, and voice bots |
| Customer information | Allows agents to access customer information, history, and sentiment from Dynamics 365 and other sources | Allows agents to access customer information, history, and sentiment from Dynamics 365 and other sources |
| Billing model | Subscription-based (monthly or annual) Volume discounts available | Subscription-based (monthly or annual) Volume discounts available |
| Trial | Free 30-day trial with up to 25 agents and unlimited channels and features | Free 30-day trial with up to 10 agents and unlimited channels and features |