“Today, organizations need all the help they can get, especially when it comes to their contact centers. Microsoft Teams is easily one of the best platforms for connecting remote employees, but contact center specific problems need contact center specific solutions.”

These were the opening words of John Waters, Editor in Chief at The Converge360 Group, as he kicked off the discussion in the now on-demand webinar, Contact Center as a Service: The Microsoft Teams Connection.

Joining John to discuss modern contact center solutions and Microsoft Teams integrations were 8x8 Director of CCaaS Product Marketing, Peter Milligan, and 8x8 Director of Product Marketing for Microsoft Teams Integrations, Talon Morris.

The many faces of the modern contact center

While many people have a notion of what contact centers used to look like, today they’re much more rich, complex, and multi-faceted than merely a ‘single location that takes phone calls from customers.’ And since the pandemic that forced many businesses’ hands on digital-first customer support and engagement, contact centers are also at the forefront of technology investment and advancement.

Moving forward, many contact centers will operate with a remote or hybrid workforce. The need for omnichannel engagement will continue to increase. And, in an era of automation, many of those channels will be self-service, through chatbots or intelligent interactive voice responses (IVRs).

But there’s also been growth in informal contact centers, where people inside of the organization take calls and respond to queries, but aren’t contact center agents. Talon Morris raised the focus on a variation of “customers,” saying the following:

“You normally think they’re outside of the organization, but there are lots of cases where internal customers have to be funneled to the right information in an organized fashion, as well. When thinking of the functionality or integrations a system needs, thinking about who all of the customers are is important, too.”

Single platform solutions can’t be replicated

8x8 for Microsoft Teams features 8x8's Microsoft-Teams-certified Contact Center that gives contact center agents easier access to employees throughout the organization, enabling enterprise-wide connectivity. “It’s an extremely powerful tool for agents, a tool they didn’t have before. It lets agents move over to an area of the organization and tap into the rich troves of information and collective knowledge of the company.”

Moving from agent attrition to agent expertise

8x8’s Peter Milligan noted agent attrition as a continuing challenge for contact centers, and 8x8’s latest research has found that customer support and customer experience leaders view agent retention as their greatest challenge both today and in the future. While headlines promote the fear that artificial intelligence (AI) and automation may soon take contact center agents’ jobs, currently the opposite is true—AI and automation are helping to handle repetitive requests and tasks, so that agents can focus on what they do best. As self-service evolves, organizations are leaving complex tasks to human agents. They’re no longer being tasked with password resets. They’re becoming experts focusing on other tasks. “Your most valuable resource in your contact center is your agents,” noted Milligan.

“Think of it like this: A customer may call or chat using self-service to get information about their investment portfolio, but when something is amiss, it’s time to talk to an agent who is an expert and has knowledge of the customer’s portfolio. This agent has been trained to deal with high-value customers and all of the company’s investment products. What if they leave?”

To stem agent attrition, Milligan suggested, organizations must improve the agent experience by empowering them with the tools and knowledge that a modern contact center solution can offer: “Helping people is in their DNA. If you can empower agents to do that, then much of their problems go away.”

Connecting contact center agents and organizational SMEs

Talon Morris noted 8x8 for Microsoft Teams’ ability to remove silos to empower agents: “Personnel silos is where the game changing is happening.”

In fact, research from MyCustomer and the European Customer Experience Organization (ECXO) shows that organizational silos continue to be the top obstacle for customer experience leaders. “Removing the invisible barriers between people and sharing expertise across the organization helps to solve that, keeping agents and customers happy,” said Morris.

The on-demand webinar discussion also covered the use of data to enhance the customer experience, how organizations such as BDO and nVent are using 8x8 Contact Center Certified for Microsoft Teams, plus ways of measuring contact center success. To learn more, watch Contact Center as a Service: The Microsoft Teams Connection on-demand.