Move Over, Phones—Microsoft Teams Lifts Your Virtual Voice
Using Microsoft Teams for voice has been getting a lot of buzz lately. You may have heard of Microsoft Teams, but many are still discovering its full breadth of capabilities, from its call functions to collaboration tools for managing virtual teams. Companies can use Teams to effectively eliminate the need for a separate phone system.
The team at Integrated Communications strives to bring its customers the latest technologies available and finds Microsoft Teams to be a remote work solution ahead of its class. With businesses operating in the midst of a global crisis, teams are working remotely now more than ever. By taking advantage of Teams’ call features, businesses are better optimized to meet and sustain the communication needs that come with the transition to remote work.
The platform’s tools can work wonders to boost your team’s management, collaboration, and communication capacity. While Teams is a chat-based workspace—bringing individual collaborators together to communicate and share ideas—its lesser-known voice features help meet the broader communications needs of your business. Microsoft Teams voice solutions allow businesses to:
- Use a network completely optimized for voice
- Leverage preferred rates
- Choose the plans that work best for you
- Tap into the security of the Microsoft Cloud through direct routing
- Boost the capabilities of other apps you use to communicate, like Skype
- Feel the total support of a client services team to guide you through implementation, adoption, and training
Microsoft Teams can be helpful when working with people from various departments or projects. Multiple team members can take charge of meetings, structuring the team so that it’s highly efficient.
Get Started with Teams’ Call Features
Microsoft Teams has become an indispensable tool for businesses worldwide amid the coronavirus pandemic. A great appeal lies in its integration with Microsoft Office 365 and product tools like PowerPoint, Word, and Excel. All the product tools can be accessed in one place, making it a seamless, all-in-one suite for your business.
- If you already have a Microsoft Office 365 license, consider taking advantage of Microsoft Teams, the platform giant’s virtual meeting product. An all-in-one set of products available at no extra cost for existing Microsoft Office 365 licensed users, Microsoft Teams fully integrates with various other services outside its own products including SharePoint, Yammer, and Exchange.
- If you don’t have a license, try it on for size. Microsoft also offers a free version of Microsoft Teams that requires only an email address for simple sign up and download. If you don’t have an Office 365 license, the free version still offers unlimited chat messages and search, video and audio calls, and file and screen sharing.
Integrated Communications is your one-stop-shop for direction and assistance, with a history of serving telecommunication needs of businesses with both hosted phone systems and WAN connections. Our partnerships give us deep insight into the range of possibilities, and your best options, for hosted phone systems and integrations.
Regardless of what type of work your business does, contact the Integrated Communications team to get started with Microsoft Teams to keep your people connected and productive while they’re working from home.
Making Online Communication More Efficient with WebRTC
As time has passed, business communications have become much more simplified. Voice and video conferencing have recently developed to the point where separate applications aren’t even required, allowing users to communicate instantly right through their browser.
Web Real-Time Communication, or WebRTC, is a potentially revolutionary online communication technology. As its name implies, it is intended to allow people to communicate instantly through a web browser rather than requiring the installation of extensions, plugins, or outside applications. Because of this, WebRTC could make business communications much more efficient for those with certain device or browser limitations. There are a number of benefits that WebRTC offers for businesses.
Increased Focus on the User
What might be the biggest benefit of WebRTC is its user-friendliness. WebRTC eliminates the limitations of applications, plugins, and extensions, and gives users the ability to communicate with each other more easily and universally, with a single solution that offers voice, video and chat capabilities.
Improved Customer Interaction
Another advantage of WebRTC is its ability to enhance customer engagement. Customers don’t have to download other programs or pay for communication services when they can simply use whatever browser they want to contact a tech support employee or other staff. Instant messaging, voice calls, and video calls are all located in a central hub.
Screen sharing is another capability that makes customer service even easier, as customers can share what they’re seeing and vice versa. Adding this technology to an online store can also be extremely helpful when customers want additional information about a product or service, enabling them to communicate with staff on the same platform as the store itself.
Complete Versatility
“Contact me” buttons and other types of calls to action can connect WebRTC with many different aspects of communication. Businesses can successfully implement it on nearly every facet of their company’s online presence, putting them in even closer contact with consumers.
Lowered Costs and Saved Time
The ability to place all methods of online communication on a single platform means that paying for multiple programs is no longer necessary. Companies only have to pay for a single solution, and it can also be a core part of a Software as a Service (SaaS) application. Ultimately, businesses will save time and money when their communication methods are located in one place.
More Opportunities for the Telecom Industry
WebRTC can also be a huge asset for the telecom industry. Telecom companies can develop a new business model to replace models for other, more traditional telecommunications applications, thus helping them transition into the new era of cloud technology.
WebRTC is beneficial in these and other ways as it continues to develop, making business communications more efficient and less expensive.