Intermedia intros contact centre for Microsoft Teams

For today’s successful unified communications and collaboration (UCC) systems, robust contact centre (CC) functionality is now table stakes, and to take the leading collaboration application to that level, artificial intelligence (AI)-powered communications firm Intermedia Cloud Communications has launched what it claims to be the industry’s first service to fully embed unified communications (UC) and customer experience (CX) capabilities directly into Microsoft Teams.

Intermedia has been a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner for over 15 years, and Intermedia Contact Centre is Certified for Teams. Building on the company’s previously released Unite for Teams Advanced, Intermedia said the addition of advanced CC capabilities no less than “transforms” Teams into a comprehensive platform for both UC and CX. In practice, the enhancement is designed to enable businesses to manage voice, chat, SMS and email interactions “seamlessly” in the Teams environment, while continuing to use its native collaboration features, such as meetings, team chats and group discussions.

Intermedia fully believes the launch sets a new benchmark as the first provider to seamlessly unify both capabilities in the Teams environment, delivering a “powerful” communications and customer experience platform.

Nancy Jamison, senior industry director of CX practice at analyst Frost & Sullivan Research regards the approach to embedding both unified communications and contact centre capabilities directly into Microsoft Teams as “a significant step forward” for the industry.

“By enhancing a widely adopted platform with seamless integration, Intermedia not only boosts productivity for Teams users, but also elevates the customer experience,” she observed. “This innovation allows businesses to simplify operations while leveraging the familiar Teams interface, making it easier to transform how employees and customers connect in today’s evolving workplace.”

Among the key UC and CC features included with the application are omnichannel support, designed to handle customer interactions across voice, chat, SMS and email – all in the Teams environment.

Enterprise-grade calling features are designed to allow users to manage calls with over 100 advanced features, including call queue management, hunt groups, call monitoring, whisper, barge-in and voicemail transcription. SMS-enabled company numbers allow businesses to deflect inbound call volume and enhance customer engagement.

AI functionality takes advantage of evolving sentiment analysis, real-time interaction summaries and AI-powered evaluations to help supervisors and agents improve customer interactions.

In terms of global connectivity and continuity, the system offers unlimited calling to 33 countries, with Intermedia assuring a 99.999% uptime service level agreement with the ability to switch to mobile or browser app during a Teams service disruption.

Other features include streamlined routing and real-time queue management and analytics, and dashboard functionality provides actionable insights to supervisors for improving team performance and customer satisfaction.

“Our fully embedded UC and CC solution for Microsoft Teams now empowers businesses with a powerful combination of advanced communication and customer experience capabilities – all within the familiar Teams environment they already use every day,” said Irina Shamkova, chief product officer at Intermedia. “With the addition of contact centre functionality, we’re enabling businesses to elevate both employee productivity and customer engagement in a single, integrated platform.”