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Microsoft takes Teams Phone to Dynamics 365 Contact Center
Microsoft's updates for Teams Phone include Dynamics 365 Contact Center integration and Copilot features to improve customer service.
Microsoft extended the availability of Teams Phone by offering the cloud-based phone system in its customer service management software. The company also added features to the Copilot AI assistant within the voice communications system.
In a pre-show briefing for Enterprise Connect, Microsoft executives unveiled a list of enhancements to the company's Teams unified communications as a service (UCaaS) platform. Features included Teams Phone for Dynamic 365 Contact Center, a cloud-based, AI-powered system made generally available last July. Teams Phone provides calling features and private branch exchange capabilities.
Next month, companies can use Teams Phone as a single telephony system for calls across Teams and the contact center system. As a result, companies with a Teams Phone license will no longer have to configure and administer a separate phone system for Dynamics 365 Contact Center, according to John Doyle, senior director of product marketing for business applications at Microsoft.
The use of Teams Phone has slowed after a spurt of adoption, said Irwin Lazar, president and principal analyst at Metrigy. In a recent survey, the research firm found that about a quarter of the enterprises using Teams planned to incorporate calling from a third-party UCaaS vendor, such as RingCentral.
Roughly 40% of companies with cloud calling are using Teams, "but I think growth has plateaued a little bit," Lazar said.
Dynamics 365 Contact Center provides self-service applications and assistance to customer service representatives. Features for service reps include tools for measuring customer sentiment, live transcriptions and conversation management across voice, chat, SMS, email and social media. The product costs $110 per user per month.
Microsoft designed the software to be integrated with Dynamics 365 or any other company's CRM system.
Microsoft will release a public preview of Copilot in Teams Phone that lets service agents hand off a call to another person. Copilot will generate a summary of the call and pass it to the next person, along with details from past discussions with the customer.
The capability lets agents provide better service and avoids having the customer explain an issue more than once. "They're not having to spend more time explaining the situation or get frustrated with repeating something they've already discussed," said Pete Daderko, senior director for Teams product marketing.
Microsoft also added a feature to Teams Phone Copilot that lets people turn off the transcription service during a Teams meeting. Copilot will still generate notes and summaries but won't retain a transcript. Financial services companies, in particular, asked for the feature, Daderko said.
Text messaging in Teams
Microsoft will also make SMS messaging available in Teams. "Simply start a new chat, enter the phone number that you'd like to text with, and then the recipient on the other end can send and receive messages directly," Daderko said.
Microsoft added its collaborative workspace platform, Loop, to Teams Channels, which are dedicated sections for people to collaborate on specific topics and projects. Loop provides a canvas for channel members to add documents, tables, bullet points and other materials related to a project.
In the second quarter, Microsoft will add a security feature to Teams that detects sensitive information during screen sharing. For example, suppose a person mistakenly shows a document with a Social Security number, credit card number or bank account number. In that case, Teams will notify the person and the meeting organizer to avoid unintentional sharing.
Also, if a file is labeled with a sensitivity level higher than the meeting in which it is shared, Teams will flag the document or automatically raise the security level of the meeting, depending on how IT configures the platform.
Antone Gonsalves is an editor at large for Informa TechTarget, reporting on industry trends critical to enterprise tech buyers. He has worked in tech journalism for 25 years and is based in San Francisco. Have a news tip? Please drop him an email.
