By now we don’t need to set up the success of Microsoft Teams, the collaboration platform’s astronomical rise has been well documented.
But with so much publicity there naturally comes a few articles that exaggerate the capabilities of Teams and maybe even get things wrong. When it comes to call queueing and routing, and the applications in the Contact Centre especially, the limits of the world’s most popular collaboration platform are relatively unknown.
Fortunately, Luware is here to guide you through what Teams is missing, and where you’ll need some help to reach your Contact Centre goals.
Although this is possible in Teams, the interface used to set up call queues is very technical. This is where a visual workflow editor that shows where each call will be routed to can be better and mean call centres are easily set up
Again, this can be done in Teams, but can only be done by your IT team and its functionality is limited. Team leaders want a solution where they can change opening hours themselves. Solutions that allow for this also carry more features and can easily make special events (one-time events, e.g. high call volumes). For each type of appointment (open, closed, special, holiday) you can define what happens with the call and make specific announcements
Interactive Voice Responses are a key element of any contact centre and can be set up with Teams by admins, however, the interface makes it difficult to see how these IVRs operate. This is where solutions for Teams come in, especially a visual workflow editor that makes it easy for the team owner to see and manage IVRs and Auto Attendants
One of the big downfalls of the Teams solution is the transfer management or lack of! Without help from outside Microsoft, customers can only be transferred to one phone line or auto-attendant once the maximum calls or minutes waiting has been eclipsed. Ioostn Luware’s solution, for example, team owners can define in the workflow when a call is transferred, depending on the teams’ availability, opening hours or customer input in the IVR, and whether it is transferred to, a user, another team or an external number.
One of the big downfalls of Teams is its management infrastructure. Being able to adjust to conditions and tweak your contact centre configuration is a crucial part of your CX strategy. However, within Teams, these changes can only be administered by the admin which is often a member of the IT department. With business-oriented solutions designed for Teams, team owners can manage the call queue for their agents themselves and have the ability to change workflows, opening hours, IVRs and add new members when they wish
Using Teams’ standard functionality, you cannot check caller information, such as their phone number, against your CRM and pull up contextual information like names and last purchases, providing much-needed context. Solutions in the market, like Luware’s, will allow you to set up an integration with Power Automate, formerly known as Flow, to give contact centre agents all the information they need
Microsoft Teams is a great solution to manage your contact centre, and you can do so without the help of external solutions. However, the most effective CX strategies make good use of the solutions around them, and in turn increase NPS scores and the longevity of customers.