The arrival of the Microsoft Digital Contact Center Platform terminates the game of catch-up that Microsoft has been playing in the contact center space with key competitors Cisco, Zoom, and Google. However, for all the allure of the Microsoft Digital Contact Center Platform, these competitors’ offers stack up well and their earlier arrival in the market provides them with an advantage, says GlobalData, a leading data and analytics company.
Gregg Willsky, Principal Analyst at GlobalData comments: “Since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, contact centers have grown more vital for managing the customer experience. However, despite the increasing importance of contact centers, true contact center capabilities had been missing from Microsoft’s unified communications and collaboration (UC&C) portfolio.”
In the past, Microsoft has offered some micro-contact center capabilities. Very recently, it added voice service to its ‘Dynamics 365’ customer experience platform and marketed that as its contact center offer but, in effect, it was only a proxy. The Microsoft Digital Contact Center Platform equips the company with genuine contact center capabilities.
Willsky continues: “The greatest strengths of the Microsoft Digital Contact Center Platform include omni-channel engagement, self-service capability, and the use of artificial intelligence. To deliver the platform, Microsoft is partnering with a wide network of independent software vendors (ISVs) and system integrators, as well as leveraging several existing Microsoft tools including Dynamics 365, Teams, Power Platform, Azure, and Nuance.
“Despite these strengths, in the near term at least, Microsoft could struggle to gain traction in the contact center space. However, the multitude of installed Office and Teams users provides a lot of potential for the company’s presence in the market.”
