For companies who have made the transition to Office 365, they are now facing the task of best utilizing all the features to drive effective use and achieve business value through incorporating appropriate Office 365 capabilities into day-to-day work. From external communications, call center applications, or internal Unified Communications initiatives, Office 365, coupled with Skype for Business, provides an abundance of features to utilize, but presents challenges to company-wide adoption.  Here are some tips from a recent article from an AltiGen partner to ensure your company is making the most of Office 365:

1. Gaining Active Senior Executive Support
Senior executives should be making use of appropriate Office 365 capabilities in their work, including sharing documents, managing executive meetings, and providing updates on organizational performance and direction through blogging or video briefings (using Office 365 Video). Provide mentoring to executives to help them through the transition to Office 365, as they will set a vital precedent for staff across the firm to do likewise.

2. Developing Departmental Champions
Identify people across your organization who can become a local champion for the use of Office 365 in departmental activities. Provide special training opportunities for them to explore the possibilities with Office 365, as well as support for bringing new work activities to life in Office 365.

3. Providing User Training
Some organizations find their users do not need any training to take advantage of Office 365, and that is likely to be true when users have previously experienced similar systems at other organizations. However, if that is not true of your organization, then some user training to explain why Office 365 is being used and how it is best used by individuals and teams across your firm will go a long way to aligning usage with intent.

4.Helping Users Overcome Problems
Users will face problems in using Office 365, and will need help in addressing these in a timely manner…left unaddressed these questions will derail the effectiveness of your deployment. Work with a trusted and knowledgeable IT support company to provide appropriate help channels to mitigate this risk.

5. Retiring Outdated Equipment
In moving to Office 365 it is likely you now have excess and redundant servers on hand. Ensure they are properly decommissioned so you can cease future licensing payments.

Introduce features that will make an immediate impact to your call center

Skype for Business, formerly Lync, can become a crucial part of your Office 365 migration in promoting its use to employees in office, remote workers, in your call center and beyond.  The use of Instant Messaging is a feature that can be introduced and whose benefits can be experienced instantaneously by employees, your operational processes, and even by customers.  When a customer calls into your call center and your representative encounters a question he/she cannot address, using the internal IM feature allows instant access to co-workers that have the necessary knowledge.  It is a useful and efficient tool to not only train and share information with employees, but the customer experiences a greater level of customer service.

AltiGen’s Max ACD solutions is the industry’s first scalable, all software automated voice and IM routing/queuing solution specifically designed for Microsoft Skype for Business and Office 365. It offers advanced call routing features and automated media handling, including the ability to route and queue requests based on priorities, skills, presence and more.  Find out more about the features of MaxACD,