I recently wrote that 8x8 Voice for Teams and Microsoft Teams are Better Together. Today, I want to delve a little deeper about issues on the minds of people considering third-party telephony solutions to augment their Teams implementation. And, we know that number is very large.

The brilliant Oisin Glynn, an 8x8 solution architect and MS Teams expert, agreed to share insights he has gleaned from customer conversations.

He says many organizations today are frustrated because of the accelerated pace of change and a dizzying number of telecom choices available to them. Additionally, more IT leaders are coming to the telephony decision table, sometimes complicating matters when conflicting priorities arise.

Direct Routing Versus Operator Connect

If you are looking for a Teams telephony solution, the most popular paths are via a direct routing solution or Microsoft’s Operator Connect. There are private cloud approaches and other means, but that is a focus for another day.

There are many direct routing flavors too and all the carriers participating in Operator Connect have different pros and cons as well. So what to do? I asked Glynn.

“As with most projects, it starts with the business need. There are many questions you must answer including how much capacity your internal team has to manage the system, what countries you will need to call, what business integrations you need, and more.”

He says it is important to understand the differences between direct routing and Operator Connect. “The biggest mistake you can make is to focus exclusively on dial tone,” Glynn commented. “In 2022, a phone call is not just speaking with a customer. It is a platform for employee training and understanding customer intent to predict their future behavior. Additionally, many calls today are not likely made with traditional handsets. They often feature a monitor that displays useful information to make the experience better for both parties.”

His advice is to consider the broader ecosystem of telephony services ranging from screen pops, business app integrations, analytics, and other features users crave. You may not need every feature from the jump, but you should be able to see a logical roadmap where you can add or subtract features as your needs evolve without a lot of hassle.

Typically, Glynn says, Operator Connect gets you a dial tone. If you want additional advanced services, you must procure those separately and mesh them together. Contrast that with an intelligent direct routing service such as 8x8 Voice for Teams that is part of an open platform. That gives you a variety of tightly integrated services that you can turn on or off. An integrated platform enables you more flexibility to mix and match services for contact center and office employees.

With businesses more commonly integrating UCaaS and CCaaS, one must make sure their selected telephony solution supports apps like Conversation IQ, that provide transcription, sentiment analysis, and other services for all employees whether at home, in the office, or in the contact center.

When considering Operator Connect or a direct routing solution, consider whether you prefer a single vendor all-in-one approach, or do you want to take a multi-vendor approach where you add components piecemeal.

“Microsoft makes it simple to get a dial tone from a carrier,” according to Glynn. “Adding advanced platform capabilities to Teams upfront can be a little more complex. What we have found though is a little extra effort on the front end pays off down the road. You can get more flexible calling plans, simpler administration, and improved abilities to customize services according to employee function, to name a few benefits. Truthfully, there are use cases where you might want both. Sometimes needs vary across a single organization, which is why you always conduct a needs evaluation before you buy anything.”

Additional Considerations for Multinational Organizations

“Multinational organizations selecting a telephony provider on top of Teams have additional options to weigh,” Glynn says. “Does the operator provide services to all the countries that matter to you? What are the international roaming fees? How portable are phone numbers? Cost is always going to be a concern, but when operating in multiple countries, you also must compare the cost with flexibility and control. For example, how easy does a potential provider make it to manage data residency? If you go with a single carrier, what do you do if that carrier has an outage?”

I asked Glynn about one of the top misconceptions IT leaders have about direct routing. “If you have the right direct routing solution, your or your team do not need to be direct routing experts. The right direct routing solution accounts for teams and non-Teams users plus other endpoints in or out of the contact center. You can get lots of control without having to patchwork a system together. When you piece services together, sometimes a blame game can happen like in that scene at the end of Reservoir Dogs where everyone is pointing at everyone else. That can end up as a no-win scenario.”

On Teams’ Trends

Glynn says Teams is “pretty much ubiquitous” in the office, but where he sees a lot of growth is in the contact center. “Customers I speak with are intent on breaking down communications silos primarily to shrink the time and expense of offering great customer experiences.” Contact center agents need to be able to communicate with product experts and others inside an organization when they have questions. You don’t want agents spending time looking for information.

Glynn says when looking for a telephony system for Teams, look at presence capabilities, how easy it is to stand up new locations globally and how future-proofed it is for new technologies coming down the pike. “There is a lot of excitement about the promise of AI to increase worker productivity. When you are ready, you want to have a seamless path to introduce it into your workflow. You have to account for your AI and business app strategy when you are implementing communications solutions.

Final Thoughts

I asked Glynn if he had any final thoughts about what he would tell companies considering third-party telephony for Teams. “I know I am going to sound like a broken record, but I can’t stress enough to think beyond dial tone. Dial tone itself is becoming somewhat of a commodity. Value is going to come from differentiated services that help you serve your markets better and faster than your competitors. Dial tone is short-term thinking. It doesn’t make any sense to me."

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