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Contact UsOver last year we’ve seen tremendous growth in Microsoft Teams, with the number of daily users nearly trebling to 115 million between March and October 2020 alone. Extending Teams into the contact centre has the potential to deliver major benefits in terms of agility, collaboration and communication. However, to justify rolling out any new platform or technology, it’s important to quantify the benefits and build a compelling business case.
Based on our experience and analyst research, including Forrester Consulting’s New Technology Total Economic Impact™ study of Microsoft Teams Platform, here are 5 key areas where the solution delivers ROI.
Microsoft Teams increases contact centre productivity by providing a unified interface for agents, meaning they don’t need to access multiple systems or search for information when talking to customers. 80% of companies surveyed by Forrester said the accessibility features in Teams made their organisation more productive. Data from Aberdeen Research suggests agents spend 15% of their time just looking for information and Forrester estimates that by reducing this, Teams could produce a saving of 1.1-8 hours per user week. That’s between 275 and 2,000 hours for a 250-seat contact centre every week.
In today’s remote and hybrid working contact centres you need to make it easy for agents and employees to communicate securely, both internally and with customers. Microsoft Teams provides a unified platform for high-quality communications, from messaging and chat, to audio and video – all with compliance and privacy built-in. 88% of those that have adopted Teams told Forrester that it is now easier to communicate securely. And by simply removing the need for agents to repeat themselves, Teams produces an average saving of 18p per call, according to Contact Babel, adding up to an annual saving of £285,480 for a 250-seat contact centre.
Microsoft Teams is built for collaboration, enabling agents to communicate with colleagues and subject matter experts from across the organisation with a single click using channels such as chat – and receive fast answers to queries, even while on the phone to customers. Meetings can be replaced by ongoing, real-time discussion threads. Forrester’s research suggests Teams can produce a typical saving of 9 minutes per first-line worker per day by improving collaboration with their teams and the wider organisation. This creates an additional 187.5 working hours per week across the workforce in a 250-seat contact centre.
Customer expectations are always rising, meaning that companies need to be constantly innovating and improving the service they offer, whether by increasing automation, driving efficiencies or introducing new channels and features. Teams is built to be open, with seamless links to other Microsoft and certified third-party contact centre applications in order to make it easy to add new functionality. According to Forrester, 64% of companies that use Teams have added bots to their infrastructure for example. And by making it easy for agents to switch between apps, Teams can produce a saving of 5 minutes a day for every frontline worker. This drives an efficiency gain of over 100 hours per week for a 250-seat contact centre.
Microsoft Teams is intuitive and easy for agents to learn, with minimal training needed. And as they have faster access to information, it translates into better service for customers. 83% of organisations surveyed by Forrester agreed that Teams had improved the customer experience.
At the same time, closer employee collaboration through Microsoft Teams deepens relationships and saves time, particularly when organisations have adopted hybrid or remote working. Happier, empowered agents not only deliver a better experience for customers but are more likely to stay with a company. Forrester found that staff attrition rates reduced by 0.4% among Teams users, lowering recruitment and replacement costs.
Microsoft Teams has the potential to deliver major benefits and impressive ROI to the contact centre. And while migrations need to be planned and implemented carefully, deployment can be rapid, particularly as it is built on the Microsoft 365 platform, meaning many organisations already have the building blocks in place to add Teams to their infrastructure.
Working with the right technology and partner is vital to getting the most out of Teams and delivering ROI. To help people understand and build a compelling business case Enghouse Interactive has created an in-depth guide to the ROI of Microsoft Teams in the contact centre – click here to download a copy.