WHITEPAPER

Always On CX:EX: How toBring Modern Contact Center
Capabilities to Microsoft Teams
Hint: Every Microsoft Teams User Is Now a
Potential Agent Powered by Exceptional CX
Capabilities

You've made the decision to migrate to Microsoft
Teams - that's fantastic! But have you considered theimpact of integrating your contact center with Teams?
Life Before Unified Communications and Contact Center Consolidation
Typically, an organization’s contact center solution is siloed. Living aside from the organizational PBX

and relying on people like you to manage the two distinct infrastructures. This separation is a challengethat manifests into multiple challenges leading to a poor customer and employee experience.
1.

Only the traditional agents in the contact center
have access to IVR, Queuing, Reporting or othercontact center capabilities. Other employees within

the company are limited to basic PBX functionalities
such as basic call routing, hunt groups and avoicemail.
2.

Fragmented

infrastructure

requiresitsowndedicated maintenance, access and security
handling. This setup requires organizations to have

network protection from threats originating throughtwo sources: the PBX and the contact center. This isasking for trouble.
3.

The service workflow is disjointed. If a call to a

traditional agent needs to be escalated to a
back-office expert or internal agent, the transfer isblind and results in the loss of important data andreporting associated with the call. The back-officeexpert or internal agent may not have access tothe call history, customer information, or any notes
made by the contact center agent, which hampers
their ability to provide quick, personalized service.

Life After Consolidation
But a unified communications (UC) integration presents the exciting opportunity to leverage yourUC platform as the vehicle for a contact center. When a contact center solution is deployed on topof an underlying UC, every UC user becomes a potential agent. This is especially relevant for internalbusiness lines, which provide internal and external-facing service.

For example: IT Helpdesk, Sales teams, HR desks, Security teams, Legal team and Travel desks. We referto the people who sit in these departments as internal agents.

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AudioCodes White Paper - Always On CX:EX: Modern CCaaS Capabilities for Microsoft Teams

Think about a call arriving at the sales department after-hours – do you really want to miss that call?

Think about a VIP HR candidate calling you on a Saturday morning – how about routing that call to arecruiter’s mobile? What about your Security team, or your Travel desk’s 24/7 availability needs?

Users situated within these departments provide ongoing service to individuals in and out of theorganization. Now they can leverage CX capabilities like: Intelligent Routing, After-hour Call Handling,
IVR, Queuing and Reporting.

When you have a Contact Center as a Service (CCaaS) that rides your UC, those capabilities areavailable to every user in your company – and this is the real power of UC and contact center
consolidation.

Build On Topof Your Existing
Communication
Tools
Let’s face it: knowing when, how, and what
technology to integrate is extremely difficult.

With the shift to cloud-based software andthe overwhelming usage of UCs like Microsoft
Teams, you may be asking yourself:•Why should we integrate our contact center with Microsoft Teams?

•What are the different types of integrations? Which one is better?

•How long does this integration take?

•How much does it cost?

•Will this integration help our agents and benefit our customers?

Leveraging UCaaS for CCaaS Capabilities
Your agents and staff rely on UC platforms like Microsoft Teams for their everyday communication

with colleagues. For them, the use of this system has become second nature. As a result, you can’t
overlook the level of convenience that comes with leveraging Microsoft Teams – especially the unified

infrastructure and ability to easily spread contact center capabilities across the organization. So,
instead of investing in a separate system, think of Microsoft Teams as the single pane of glass for youragents’ communication and collaboration efforts.
3AudioCodes White Paper - Always On CX:EX: Modern CCaaS Capabilities for Microsoft Teams

Secure Calling Infrastructure
A contact center solution that leverages Microsoft Teams, namely in the Extend and Power models,
provides Microsoft-grade calling infrastructure, media quality, encryption, and security. Now you’reusing the same credentials for cross-company management, which means there's no need to deal
with another application. You’re also using a single, consolidated platform for UCaaS and CCaaS, youcan reduce licensing and maintenance costs and simplify your IT management.

Invest in the Right Fit
Typically, you have two options for spreading the contact center across your organization:
1.

Buying more seats from your existing CCaaS provider

2.

Extending your UCaaS solution with CCaaS capabilities

The first option typically means working with a premium CCaaS vendor, which comes with a hefty
price per seat. These premium CCaaS vendors provide fully-fledged contact center platforms that
often prove too capable for what a typical Microsoft Teams CCaaS user really needs.
Many organizations use under 50 percent of the capabilities within their specialist contact center
solution. The bells and whistles typically go far beyond everyday needs, and come with a lot of “niceto haves”.
Instead, extending your Microsoft Teams with a CCaaS integration, can add the most criticalcomponents for providing quality service, without having to stick to a heavy, detached contact
center platform with features you probably won't use.

Many organizations use under 50 percent of thecapabilities within their specialist contact center
solution. The bells and whistles typically go far
beyond everyday needs, and come with a lot of“nice to haves”.

4

AudioCodes White Paper - Always On CX:EX: Modern CCaaS Capabilities for Microsoft TeamsEnhance Customer and EmployeeExperience
Now that people have access to activities and experiences again, there is a rush to try to make up
for lost time. Expectations are at an all-time high. This means service quality needs to be better thanit was in the past and on a tighter budget. The key to achieving this is by empowering employeeswith the right tools and resources to improve employee experience (EX), using customer experiencecapabilities.

Remove the Barrier Between Agents & Back-Office Experts
When your organization's Microsoft Teams and contact center are integrated, agents have direct
and transparent access to anyone in the company. This allows agents to see others availability andeffectively bring in someone from IT, Product, Support and even R&D to provide a detailed solution to acustomer issue. Typically, these are all departments that an agent would have limited access to.
By removing the barrier of connection between agents and back-office experts, you are providing
agents with the access they need to be more confident and effective at their job. This leads to a better
employee experience, and when you have a happier and more qualified agent, your customers havebetter experiences too.

5AudioCodes White Paper - Always On CX:EX: Modern CCaaS Capabilities for Microsoft Teams

Allow Every Microsoft Teams User to Become a Potential Agent
When you already use the Microsoft Teams ecosystem across your organization, it makes sense toleverage the tool you've invested in to enable every UC user to provide great customer experience(CX). The idea here is beautifully simple, yet powerful. As CX technology becomes more commoditized,
it presents an opportunity for you to leverage these modern technologies not only for the main service
desk but also for other internal business lines, such as the IT Help Desk, HR Desk, Sales teams, Security
teams, and more.

When you already use the Microsoft Teams ecosystem
across your organization, it makes sense to leverage thetool you've invested in to enable every UC user to provide
great customer experience (CX).

Back-office
Expert(Product, Marketing, andR&D Departments, etc.)
Internal Agents(IT Helpdesk, Travel Desk,Security Team)
Main Service DeskContact Center Agents

These users receive many calls during the day and can benefit from CX capabilities like intelligent
routing, voicemail, IVR, queuing, all while still using Microsoft Teams or other phone systems as the goto UC.
For example, if a call arrives at the Travel desk department after-hours, with an urgent need, you don’t
want to miss that call. Similarly, if a VIP customer has a security concern on a Saturday morning, you
should route that call to an on-duty security staff’s mobile. It’s crucial to ensure these departments arereachable, especially if you’re a global company.

6AudioCodes White Paper - Always On CX:EX: Modern CCaaS Capabilities for Microsoft TeamsCX capabilities for internal agents is more than availability. It also means providing reporting todepartments like sales. Say you have a department of 200-300 sales reps. Imagine if you had accessto who is answering calls, the conversation length, what people are calling about, the amount of calls
on a monthly basis, and the result of these conversations. This is information that’s worth knowing asa sales leader.
By empowering your internal agents with CX capabilities, you can streamline your workflow and ensurethat every customer inquiry is handled efficiently and effectively.

ImportantConsiderations
During theIntegration Process:The 3 Microsoft models
for a Teams CCaaS
Hurdles come when organizations try to combine elements designed in different eras, and withdifferent connectivity methods. Microsoft has three integration models for a Microsoft Teams
integration with a contact center: the Connect, the Extend, and the Power model.
Connecting a modern UC platform like Microsoft Teams, for example, to a CCaaS solution thatconnects with Teams over SIP (e.g. the Connect model), may entail various challenges.

What to Expect with the Connect Model•Your Microsoft Teams and contact center
environments are isolated and connected
over a blind SIP transfer•

Graph API is used for presence-based
routing, with throttling limitations•The call and its media are handled outsideof Microsoft Teams•

Reports are glued together from multiple
sources of data (contact center & MicrosoftTeams)

What to Expect with the Extend Model
The Extend model is already a big step forward from the Connect model namely in how it integrates
with Microsoft Teams Phone. Contact center calls are brought into Microsoft Teams over Graph API,and optionally via Microsoft Calling Plans or Operator Connect, with full call media handling within theMicrosoft Teams ecosystem.
Organizations can design workflows and advanced routing configurations down to the individualand measure the quality of their system and interactions, with full visibility of agents and back-officeexperts availability, and 100% authentic reporting data arriving from a single calling source.
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AudioCodes White Paper - Always On CX:EX: Modern CCaaS Capabilities for Microsoft Teams

Key challenges associated with the Extend model are related to both infrastructure as well as UIflexibility and consistency of the agent experience.
From an architecture perspective, the Extend model purely relies on Graph API for presence andMicrosoft Teams Phone as the core calling and routing elements for the contact center solution.
Optionally, some vendors are also utilizing the Azure Calling Bot to leverage Microsoft Calling Plans orOperator Connect. Such architecture may introduce additional routing paths and latency associatedwith these multiple underlying infrastructure elements, coming to expression in the accuracy andresponsiveness of real-time routing data.
Additionally, the Extend model entails using a Microsoft Teams-native application only, confined to theMicrosoft-related limitations and guidelines. This may present difficulties in creating a fully-flexible UI,and in ensuring a consistent agent and supervisor application experience across multiple devices,
operating systems or screens (for example: CRM screen, iOS/Android, Desktop Web, Mobile Web, etc.).

The Unmatched Abilities of the Power Model
The Power model is the tightest integration between a CCaaS and Microsoft Teams.
This model allows a CCaaS to use your existing Microsoft Teams Phone System infrastructure, just likethe Extend model, while providing you with a dedicated, fully-flexible and unified agent and supervisor
application that acts as a natural extension to the user's Microsoft Teams client across multiple
modalities (voice and digital channels) and communication types (external or internal).
Voice integration to Microsoft Teams is based on a native Azure voice application, which leverages theMicrosoft Teams Phone System.
From an architecture standpoint, real-time routing decisions and event reporting is carried at highaccuracy and minimal time, with fewer routing decision elements and significant reduction of APIinteractions.
This integration between a custom application built by the CCaaS vendor to Microsoft Teams, isachieved by leveraging a modern set of APIs and SDKs from Microsoft Azure Communication Services.

The Power Model features:•Microsoft Teams contact center on top ofAzure Communication Services•

Contact center agents & supervisors
desktop UI is built as an extension to theMicrosoft Teams Voice core•

Microsoft-grade media quality, encryptionand security

AudioCodes Native ACS
Application + Real Time AgentStatus & Event Analytics•Calls are handled natively within theMicrosoft Teams ecosystem•Native call data and single source ofreporting•Direct connectivity to all the organization’s
Microsoft Teams users

CONVERSATIONAL INTERACTION CENTER

Microsoft Teams
Direct Routing

Power Model Contact Center Integration
Microsoft Azure Communication
Services APIs & SDKs
8Microsoft Teams
Phone System
AudioCodes White Paper - Always On CX:EX: Modern CCaaS Capabilities for Microsoft TeamsAudioCodes VocaBrings Modern
Contact CenterCapabilities toMicrosoft Teams
Today's modern workplace demands a new approach to customer experience, one that not only
empowers agents to enjoy their jobs and provide exception service to customers but enables internalbusiness lines to provide exceptional service throughout the organization too.
AudioCodes Voca, a lightweight CCaaS with built-in Conversational AI designed entirely for Microsoft
Teams, brings an equal emphasis on employee experience and customer experience.
With Voca as a Native Microsoft Teams App, you consolidate your unified communications andcontact center into one-screen, allowing every Microsoft Teams user to become a potential agent.
Now agents have real-time access to back-office experts to help improve responsiveness, remove
department silos, and improve connection among employees.
Voca uses the Microsoft Power Model and offers a unique mix of contact center and voice expertise,making it an ideal solution for organizations looking to modernize their CX capabilities with minimal
upfront costs. With Voca, customers can enjoy a modern CCaaS from day one of their UC migration,
without having to wait for the migration to be complete.

Want to know more about AudioCodes Voca
Conversational Interaction Center for Microsoft Teams?

80 Kingsbridge Rd - Piscataway, NJ 08854
Tel: +1-732-469-0880
1 Hayarden Street, Airport City, Lod, 7019900, Israel
Tel: +972-3-976-4000

www.audiocodes.com

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AudioCodes White Paper - Always On CX:EX: Modern CCaaS Capabilities for Microsoft Teams