6 Touchpoints To Consider Before Migrating to Teams Telephony

Are you looking to replace your old phone system with Microsoft Teams? Good choice! But, before you take the plunge into cloud telephony, it’s worth taking a moment to consider how this move will affect your employees.

To enable a seamless transition, review your calling touchpoints and check if the built-in functions in Teams will meet your employees’ needs. If not, you can add additional call management and contact center functionality through third-party extensions.

Touchpoints will differ between companies, but below are some common use cases that are affected by an organization’s telephony system.

The Reception

 

Receptionists need an attendant console to handle calls effectively.

Receptionists are the gatekeepers of business. They answer and filter incoming calls and transfer them to the responsible employees. To do their job well and make an excellent first impression, receptionists require an attendant console to handle calls effectively.

Built-in transfer options in Teams are limited and not optimal for busy receptionists and front desks. Third-party solutions let you integrate an attendant console directly into Teams. That way, receptionists only need to navigate one platform and don’t have to switch between different solutions. An attendant console provides receptionists with the right tools and features to handle calls effectively:

  • A user-optimized dashboard
  • View of the callers in the queue
  • Transfer and hold options
  • Contact search by different attributes, such as name, title, and location
  • Overview of colleagues’ availability via their presence status and calendar

 

Attendant Console for Teams

Call Pickup Groups

Call pickup groups, sometimes also called hunt groups, refer to a group of people answering an impersonal phone number such as a Sales or HR hotline. When you migrate to Teams, you must consider how you will migrate and manage these various department hotlines.

To ensure that no calls get lost, you have to set up and manage call groups in Teams. Microsoft Teams offers some basic routing and IVR functionality. However, the setup and management require an IT administrator. Personal configurations are limited, call reporting is basic, and there is no graphic call flow designer.

Third-party routing solutions can extend Teams with advanced functionality and user convenience. They typically offer:

  • Intuitive setup and management of call flows, often with a graphical user interface
  • Easy management of IVRs and opening hours
  • Uploads and management of announcements and hold music for a better service experience
  • Self-service for service owners: team leads can configure setup and users themselves without the help of IT
  • Extensive call reporting

 

Call pickup groups for Teams

Internal Helpdesks

 

Employees already use Teams for collaboration and direct communication. The migration to cloud telephony is an opportunity to also bring service departments to Teams.

You probably have a department that provides internal services, such as an IT or HR helpdesk. These operate similarly to call groups but also need a case management or ticketing tool. To resolve problems quickly or keep track of open tickets, it’s important that calls get distributed to the correct employees and that these employees can access and track the case history.

Since the employees are already using Teams for collaboration and direct communication, migrating to cloud telephony is an excellent opportunity to bring these service departments to Teams. Since every user on Teams is already identified, there is no need for additional authentication. And Teams’ omnichannel capabilities with voice, video, file sharing, and screen share are compelling for internal service desks, especially for IT support.

Third-party solutions will add extensive call routing capabilities, user management, and powerful automation features to boost your service desk’s efficiency:

  • Low-code integration of ticket tools or case management using Microsoft Power Automate
  • Automation of processes, e.g., to automatically create new or open existing tickets
  • Omni-device – users can call from laptops or smartphones, from the office, home, or on the go
  • Teams call or external number – The service desk can be reached directly within Teams or from any external number
  • Extensive call reporting and analysis

 

Helpdesk for Teams

Branch Numbers

Your organization probably still has physical locations – retail stores, headquarters, warehouses, or branch offices. Customers, suppliers, and partners want to get in touch with these locations for various reasons, such as checking if a product is in store or accessing the delivery ramp.

Having branch numbers is vital to provide location-specific information. With Teams, you can easily manage these branch numbers from anywhere.

Extending Teams with advanced routing and queueing capabilities, and maybe even with an attendant console solution, allows employees to answer the branch numbers to:

  • Manage multiple locations/branches with one solution
  • Easily manage users, announcements, and opening hours
  • See which service line (or branch) the caller has dialed
  • Transfer callers to the right person internally

 

Branch numbers with Teams

Multi-brand Organizations and Brokers

You may also have subsidiaries or divisions that operate as independent legal entities, for example, different brands or independent brokers. Rolling out Teams telephony across all subsidiaries, divisions, and brokers help you to simplify IT and streamline communication.

You should be aware, however, that Teams is incapable of recreating organizational units and permissions for call management. This only becomes possible with extensions from third-party providers.

Centralizing the administration of the service numbers of all entities with third-party solutions allows you to simplify IT and empower users with these capabilities:

  • Recreate your organization structure and specify user permissions
  • Centrally manage corporate resources such as announcements to ensure on-brand communication
  • Self-service for subsidiaries, divisions, and brokers to manage and configure their services themselves
  • Set overflows or redirect calls, e.g., transfer callers to the corporate 24×7 call center outside opening hours. Discover multi-site telephony with Teams

 

Multi-site telephony with Teams

The Formal Contact Center

 

With contact center extensions for Teams you can create more collaborative customer service.

The ultimate customer touchpoint is usually the contact center. You probably have a hotline where dedicated agents provide support and answer customer inquiries about products, claims, and returns.

To manage these agents, you need sophisticated routing options and extensive reporting. When you roll our Teams as your company-wide telephony system, you need to consider how you will manage the contact center.

To fully leverage these benefits of Teams, you can bring agents on the same communication platform as other employees. That way, you can simplify your IT and create more collaborative customer service.

Contact center extensions add the needed extras to Teams to turn it into a fully functional contact center solution:

  • Granular routing options based on skills, skill level, and responsibility
  • Real-time, custom dashboards with KPIs
  • In-depth historic reporting
  • Integrations with CRM and ticketing tools to provide 360° customer view
  • Automations to support agents and increase efficiency

 

Contact Center for Teams

Summary

If you are migrating to Teams cloudy telephony, it makes sense to migrate every touchpoint. That way, Teams becomes your singular experience hub. For a seamless migration, assess all your calling touchpoints first. Identify all the gaps where the Teams built-in functionality is not sufficient and look for third-party solutions that can address these. This will prevent departments from looking for their own solutions and prevent a shadow IT. Teams is a powerful platform, and with third-party solutions, nothing should prevent you from maintaining a smooth operation. Check out our call management and contact center add-ons for Teams

Want to learn more about how to manage all your touchpoints in Teams?

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