Hundreds of millions of users rely on Microsoft Teams to communicate and collaborate with colleagues, partners and customers. However, telephony limitations are perhaps the platform’s most pronounced shortcoming.
Voice calling was not a high priority when Teams was launched in 2016 — the platform was designed to support workplace collaboration with chat, video conferencing, file sharing and application integration features. In response to growing demand for integrated telephony capabilities during the global transition to remote work, Microsoft developed a couple of different ways to incorporate voice calling into Teams. Neither is ideal, however.
In this post, we’ll explore some of the reasons it can be difficult to make phone calls from within Teams.
Features
Users can gain telephony functionality within Teams by purchasing licenses for the Microsoft Phone System add-on or upgrading to the E5 enterprise-level version of Microsoft 365. Both offer basic functions but lack many capabilities you’d expect from a business-grade phone system. For instance, Teams lacks essential features like call waiting, call transfer and caller ID. The limitations are particularly pronounced in call center environments. For example, the lack of integration with customer relationship management (CRM) systems means customer service agents cannot easily access customers’ history, including previous interactions and purchases. Additionally, there is no native call recording functionality and only limited reporting features.
Application Integrations
A key benefit of digital telephony is the ability to integrate with key business applications to eliminate communication bottlenecks, streamline workflows and enhance productivity. Although Teams offers native integration with hundreds of apps, many key business applications are not supported. For example, it doesn’t work with Salesforce, the world’s No. 1 CRM platform. Many leading project management, accounting, human resources and inventory management apps require a third-party integration platform to connect with Teams.
Coverage
Microsoft’s calling plans are limited to just 10 countries. Most multinational companies need to get a secondary phone provider for international calls. Capacity can also be an issue. A Teams Phone System license allows a maximum of 300 users, which isn’t enough for many large enterprise organizations.
Reliability
Voice calling within Teams is generally very dependable but may not meet the reliability requirements of some businesses. Microsoft’s four-nines uptime guarantee for Teams allows for more than 52 minutes of downtime per year while most telecom providers offer five-nines uptime, which translates to only about 5 minutes of downtime per year. In addition, Teams relies on various third-party integrations such as PBX and SIP trunks, which can cause reliability issues if not configured properly.
Compatibility
Although Teams supports calling on various devices, not all phones are compatible with the platform. As of February, only desk phones and conference room devices from Yealink, Crestron, Lenovo, Polycom and AudioCodes are compatible with Teams. For mobile phones, Teams is only compatible with the four most recent major versions of Android and the two most recent major versions of iOS.
Cost
Microsoft’s per-user pricing tends to be more expensive than that of other telecommunications providers. A study by the Cavell Group found that Microsoft pricing is 35 percent higher than the average of several regional telecommunications providers. Another study by Metrigy found that Microsoft customers tend to overpay, using an average of only 60 percent of the calling plan minutes they purchase.
Conclusion
Teams is a fabulous platform for workforce collaboration, but telephone functionality remains a work in progress. As a result, about 85 percent of Teams users leverage a third-party telephony partner instead of using a Microsoft calling plan. In our next post, we’ll look at how integrating a leading business phone service such as RingCentral can enhance the communication possibilities within Teams.
