Microsoft Teams is all the rage right now. In fact, Teams has over 270 million monthly users! With all those users and businesses relying on Teams, you would hope that it would meet all the communications needs of the company. Sadly, this is not the case.
Microsoft Teams was developed as a collaboration tool; it was not meant to be a communications solution that completely replaces a business’ phone system. This means that there are some major gaps in features and functions that desperately need to be filled.
Microsoft Teams: Features You Need
Microsoft Teams offers several features that traditional phone systems do not. These features are often included in hosted PBX solutions, but Teams delivers them within the Microsoft suite.
Video Calls: Video conferencing grew in popularity most recently due to the pandemic. With so many people working remotely, a solution was needed to help them collaborate and work as if they were together in the office.
Chat: Along with video calls, chat also helped remote workers collaborate quickly. With the chat features, workers no longer need to check and send emails back and forth all day long. Chat is also instantaneous, creating a fast pathway between coworkers.
File Storage: Microsoft Teams allows its users to share documents. Also, once those documents are shared, they are stored within the platform.
Microsoft Teams – Features Left Behind
Let’s face it; remote workers have heavily relied on video, chat, and file storage components. However, many businesses have been missing out on enterprise-level call features that are needed to run a successful and client-friendly business.
The following list is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to hosted phone features that are lacking in the Microsoft Teams platform.
Call Routing: It’s important to your customers that they connect to the correct department quickly. Sometimes customers do not have the correct phone number for the department they need, and they just call the general number. You need to be able to transfer those calls, or even route those calls to the correct department without any delay. Microsoft Teams does not give you this conditional option.
Call Reporting: Some of your most important decisions can be made more easily with data to back them up. When you boost the capabilities of Microsoft Teams with an integrated phone solution, you can access information and data regarding your business calls.
Multi-location Calls: In terms of voice calls, Microsoft Teams offers the bare minimum. The connections are very simplistic in nature, and multi-location calls are not an option. Choices need to be included with these situations.
Find Me/Follow Me: Find Me/Follow Me is another great feature associated with hosted phone solutions. When you need a call sent to a certain device, or if you need several devices to ring at once, you can set that up through Find Me/Follow Me rules. Unless, of course, your only phone solution is Microsoft Teams.
SMS: SMS allows businesses to capture their audience with a whole new confidence. With most of the population carrying their mobile phones with them, you can be sure your messages are being seen. This feature is not available through Microsoft Teams alone.
Sentiment Analysis: When communicating with clients, it is important to understand their intentions and motivations. Some of this comes across in the way they word their requests. Microsoft Teams can not pick up on the subtle (or not so subtle) nuances of the way people speak and share their concerns or responses.
Automatic Callback: When you integrate Microsoft Teams and a hosted solution, you get the option to have your system put people in a queue for an automatic callback when representatives are available.
Call Monitoring: Call monitoring is so important for training and clarification purposes. You can’t get that with Microsoft Teams alone, you’ll need to pair it with our hosted solution.
Call Centre: Microsoft Teams alone does not have the capability to support call centre features. This means you will miss out on full voice recording and transcription as well as call, live and historical reporting (that can help with evaluating your teams performance).
Easy to Use Portal: hosted phone solutions come with easy configuration of call routing, call queues, auto attendants, QoS tracing, ring groups, custom messaging for hold, and text to voice.
Other Financial Considerations
Microsoft does offer phone service, however their domestic and international calling plans can be quite expensive. Along with expensive calling plans, they also offer per-user license plans for Microsoft 365 E5. When you use an outside phone service provider, you can avoid the fees through those plans.
Along with fees associated with Microsoft Teams, you need to consider equipment needed to operate the service. If you were to utilize Microsoft Teams alone, you would need to buy Teams-compatible headsets. However, any IP phone works with our hosted phone system.
Often, companies will employ IT personnel to maintain and upkeep their solutions. This is certainly the case when they use Microsoft Teams as their main solution. When you integrate with a phone service provider, the need for IT goes away.
A Solution for Your Solution
So, what if you want ALL these features? You want the Microsoft Teams features AND the hosted PBX features of a phone system? Not only that, but you also want your clients to have great call quality and guaranteed uptime. The simple answer is you need to find a way to combine the two.
With integrations, you can supercharge Teams with the voice features you need, creating a more complete communications platform for business. This not only continues to help your remote, hybrid and in-office workers, but also helps increase customer service.
A Reliability You Can Count On
Call quality is a critical consideration for any organization. While Microsoft Teams Phone System offers a 99.9% service level agreement, attaining this level of voice quality and reliability requires complex setup and fine-tuning of your network, workstations, and endpoints.
Yabbit has a 99.999% guaranteed uptime service level agreement (SLA) that covers UCaaS and CCaaS. Yabbit Security and compliance certifications are also amongst the broadest and most up-to-date in the UCaaS industry. With Yabbit, you can be sure that your solution is going to offer the features you need with the reliability to back them up.
Data Sovereignty is a major concern for Australian Businesses and Yabbit falls under Australian Data Sovereignty. None of the recordings or information is houses offshore and none can be obtained legally by other countries laws or governance. Yabbit is an Australian Cloud platform that protects your information.
Not only does Yabbit offer the infrastructure you need to have a reliable solution, but also offers the technology you need to utilize the equipment you already have in place. Yabbit is your own cost-effective SIP provider in your region! SIP trunking your current equipment along with Yabbit’s free apps for iOS and Android means you can get started today!
If you are ready to supercharge your Microsoft Teams, Yabbit is here for you. We can help you get the most out of your communications solution. Take a trip down the Yabbit hole with us, so you can get better business connections today.
