Fully leverage the power of Microsoft 365 and Teams Phone
Executive Overview
Many organizations rely on legacy phone systems and out-of-date call center products. They may be using yet another platform for video conferences. Over time, managing disparate platforms often results in higher costs, fragmented service and missed insights.
With Microsoft 365 and Teams Phone, your company utilizes a single, unified platform for all internal and external communications. The benefits increase even more when you add a native Teams Contact Center.
CoreEngage by Altigen is a native Microsoft 365 application that transforms Microsoft Teams into an AI enabled omnichannel contact center. This empowers organizations to deliver unified, intelligent, and cost-effective customer experiences—all from within Teams.
This white paper is the second in a series designed to help decision-makers maximize their Microsoft ecosystem investments, elevate both customer and employee satisfaction, and reduce operating expenses.
The Problem: Siloed Communication and Disconnected Customer Journeys
Multiple Technology Platforms
If your organization uses multiple products for the phone system, conferencing and contact center, it can be challenging for both your employees and customers. This fragmentation can lead to:
- Interoperability and Integration Issues
- Lack of seamless communication: Products from different vendors may not be designed to work together.
- Disparate data and lack of visibility: Can make it difficult to get a unified, end-to-end view of your communication and customer service operations.
- Management and Support Headaches
- Increased complexity in management: You will have to manage multiple contracts, billing cycles, and service-level agreements (SLAs) with different vendors.
- Multiple support channels: Your staff will need to navigate different support systems and processes for each vendor.
- Financial and Operational Inefficiencies
- Higher total cost of ownership (TCO): The cumulative costs of maintenance and IT resources to manage different systems can be substantial.
- Overlapping functionalities: There may be overlapping features, leading to redundant spending and wasted resources.
- Limited visibility and control: Without a centralized platform, it’s harder to get a holistic view of your performance.
- Inconsistent User and Customer Experience
- Fragmented user experience: Employees may have to use different interfaces and tools for voice calls, video conferencing, and contact center.
- Inconsistent customer service: If agents have to switch between multiple systems it can lead to delays and poor customer experience.
- Security and Compliance Risks
- Varying security protocols: Different vendors may have inconsistent security protocols and practices, which can create vulnerabilities and make it difficult to implement a unified security strategy.
- Fragmented security management: It’s much harder to monitor and manage security across a multi-vendor environment, as each vendor may have its own security tools and reporting.
The Solution: Microsoft Teams + Native Teams Contact Center
Microsoft 365 has fundamentally changed how organizations acquire and use software. Instead of piecing together applications from multiple vendors, companies benefit from an ever-improving integrated suite of applications. And further extending its core capabilities, advanced solutions such as CoreEngage can be created natively within the Teams and Microsoft 365 ecosystem. Because it leverages your existing Microsoft Teams infrastructure, it can reduce complexity and associated costs
Native Teams vs. “Teams-Compatible” Contact Centers
Many contact centers seem to have the same features, but how they function varies greatly. If you are using Microsoft 365, a Teams based contact center can be a great option. However, while some platforms claim to “work” or “integrate” with Microsoft Teams, they may rely on rerouting or bridging traffic between their own platform and Teams. This approach creates multiple drawbacks:
| Feature / Capability | CoreEngage (Native Teams) | “Teams Compatible” |
| User Interface | Fully embedded in Teams | Requires separate app; agents swivel-seat |
| Voice Integration | Teams is the phone system | Requires traffic bridging, more latency |
| Agent Experience | One interface for all channels | Disjointed UX, slower task switching |
| Infrastructure Complexity | Microsoft-native infrastructure | Additional middleware, gateways, configs |
| Licensing and Support | Simplified licensing | Layered licensing |
| Security and Compliance | Inherits Microsoft 365 compliance | May require separate audits and security reviews |
| Performance and Reliability | Built on Azure, Optimized QoS | May introduce additional points of failure |
AI Enabled for Sentiment Analysis, Translation and Conversation Summary
Introducing CoreEngage
CoreEngage is purpose-built to natively integrate customer engagement into Microsoft Teams. It provides a single, intelligent workspace for every interaction and extends your existing investment in Microsoft 365.
Key Strengths:
- Focus: Strong emphasis on a seamless, unified experience within Teams.
- Channels: Omnichannel capabilities including voice, webchat, email, and social messaging like SMS and WhatsApp. All channels are managed directly within the Teams client.
- AI: Integrates with Microsoft’s AI tools (e.g., Azure AI) for features like AI-powered call summaries, sentiment analysis, language translation and virtual agents.
- Reporting: Leverages Microsoft Power BI for advanced analytics, providing deep insights into agent performance and customer interactions.
- CRM Integration: Offers out-of-the-box and custom CRM integrations with platforms like Salesforce, ServiceNow, Dynamics 365, and others.
- PSTN Voice Integration: Teams is the phone system, so no need to transfer to and from other platforms
Supervisor Tools
CoreEngage makes it easy for supervisors to manage and optimize contact center operations. With real-time monitoring, agent management, and performance analytics they have the information they need, all within Teams.
The Practical Application of AI
Many organizations are evaluating how they might utilize AI to improve their operations. The challenge is how and where to start. CoreEngage makes AI easy with “plug and play” options that leverage Microsoft AI. For more advanced requirements, Altigen’s skilled team of AI developers can create custom applications to enhance productivity across the organization. Here are some of the out of the box benefits of CoreEngage AI:
- Agent Assistance and Productivity
- Real-Time Summaries: After an interaction, such as a call or a chat, AI automatically generates a concise summary. This saves agents a significant amount of time they would otherwise spend on after-call work.
- Contextual Information: AI helps provide customer context to agents. It can analyze past interactions from various channels (voice, chat, etc.) and present a summary of the customer’s journey.
- CRM Updates: The AI can be used to automatically update the CRM with key information from a conversation, reducing time and improving accuracy.
Automated AI Evaluations of Customer Interactions
- Automated Quality Assurance
- AI can be used to score calls and alert managers for good and bad behavior. It’s no longer necessary for a supervisor to listen to hours of recordings. Reports can also be automatically provided to management that summarize how the team is performing.
- Customer Self-Service and Automation
- AI-Powered Chatbots: These can be simple Q&A bots that answer predefined questions or more advanced, AI-driven chatbots that understand and respond to a wider range of queries. 24/7 service, without needing to wait for an agent.
- Intelligent Routing: When the chatbot can’t resolve an issue, it can intelligently escalate the interaction to the most appropriate human agent.
- Enhancing Communication and Language
- Real-Time Translation: CoreEngage uses AI for real-time translation of text-based channels. This allows agents and customers to communicate in more than 100 languages.
- Sentiment Analysis: Use AI to assess the tone of a conversation. Identify customers who are frustrated or happy, making it easy for supervisors to identify which interactions to evaluate.
- Text-to-Speech and Speech-to-Text: Automate voice prompts and easily transcribe voice calls.
Return on Investment
Implementing a contact center is an investment that can have a significant impact on both customers and the organization. Utilizing a native Teams Contact Center such as CoreEngage can minimize risk and leverage the existing Microsoft 365 investment. Here are some of the benefits:
- Cost Reduction and Operational Savings
- Reduced IT and Infrastructure Costs: A native Teams contact center is a cloud-based solution that leverages your existing Microsoft 365 licensing.
- Lower Telephony Costs: By utilizing Teams for both internal and external communication, organizations can reduce or even eliminate some long-distance and inter-office calling charges.
- Reduced Onboarding and Training Costs: A Forrester study found that training time for new hires decreased by 75% in a Teams-based calling environment.
- Enhanced Agent Productivity and Efficiency
- Unified “Single Pane of Glass” Experience: Agents won’t need to switch between multiple applications which studies show can be a major source of lost productivity.
- Seamless Collaboration: CoreEngage agents can easily use Teams chat, video, or a quick call to resolve a complex customer issue in real time. This reduces average handle time (AHT) and improves first-contact resolution (FCR).
- AI-Powered Automation: AI features such as automated call summarization reduce after-call work, allowing agents to move on to the next customer more quickly. AI-powered chatbots can also handle basic inquiries, freeing up human agents for more important tasks.
Automated AI Evaluations of Customer Interactions
- Improved Customer Satisfaction and Business Outcomes
- Faster and More Informed Service: By providing agents with a unified view of the customer journey, a native Teams contact center like CoreEngage enables faster and more personalized service. This leads to higher customer satisfaction (CSAT) scores.
- Reduced Customer Churn: Companies that offer excellent customer service are more likely to retain customers.
- Enhanced Omnichannel Experience: With CoreEngage, the customer’s history and context follow them, and this seamless journey leads to a better overall experience.
- Increased Business Agility and Scalability
- Rapid Deployment and Scalability: As a cloud-based solution, a native Teams contact center can be deployed quickly without major capital investments.
- Work Anywhere: Teams is built for a work-from-anywhere environment. CoreEngage allows agents and supervisors to work remotely with the same functionality and collaborative tools as they would in a physical office.
Summary
Using Teams Phone and a native Teams contact center like CoreEngage is a natural progression for organizations that already use Microsoft 365. This combined solution makes the most of the Microsoft ecosystem and takes advantage of its built-in AI, business resiliency, security, and ever evolving features.
Altigen’s CoreEngage Contact Center builds on our decades of experience delivering usable solutions that deliver real return on investment.
Getting Started
Whether you’re modernizing a legacy contact center or enhancing your Microsoft Teams deployment, CoreEngage provides the native integration, scalability, and intelligence to future-proof your customer engagement.
Schedule a free consultation with an Altigen expert to see how CoreEngage can help your business drive better outcomes—for your customers, your agents, and your bottom line. You can reach out to us at: sales@altigen.com
We also recommend reviewing the first white paper in this series: Your Next Phone System is Already in Microsoft 365, available at https://altigen.com/your-next-phone-system-is-already-in-microsoft-365/.
About the Authors
Joe Hamblin is Chief Digital Officer at Altigen Technologies, where he leads the company’s next-generation AI product offerings. With over 30 years of experience in the technology industry, Joe previously served as Vice President of Enterprise Services at Sprint/T-Mobile. It was during this time that he began working in the Unified Communications space, going back to Microsoft Live Communications Server in the mid-2000s.
Partnering with Microsoft, Joe and his technical team were among the early adopters of Office Communications Server R1 & R2, as well as Lync, Skype for Business, and eventually Microsoft Teams. His unique blend of technical vision and enterprise execution gives him a forward-looking view into the future of workplace communication and collaboration.
Ben Fullman is a Senior Contact Center Engineer at Altigen Technologies. He is passionate about helping organizations rethink how they engage with their customers by deeply understanding their workflows and co-creating modern communication solutions. Ben thrives on collaborative design sessions and is most fulfilled when delivering outcomes that streamline operations and exceed client expectations.
