Cloud contact center platform UJET already has a contact center suite with a spectrum of voice and digital engagement tools that features (smart) device capabilities, artificial intelligence, and advanced analytics. And brands like Instacart have gone so far as to entrust the firm with its business.
Instacart: along with companies like Zettle by PayPal, a Swedish company previously (known as iZettle) and acquired by PayPal as its name suggests- for $2.2 billion in 2018 - leverage UJET contact center technology. In turn: this could enable them to pull off various customer service feats, like enhancing self-service capabilities and automating various formerly manual tasks to free up agents to be more productive.
One might argue that it also enables agents to put more time and effort (into) resolving more complex customer queries - likely leading to a slew of important factors: boosting critical contact center metrics such as improved customer/employee satisfaction, reduced operational costs, etc.
Now, UJET says it will integrate with the UCC tool - Microsoft Teams, which now has 270 million monthly active users, according to Statista.
What is UJET?
In 2021 Microsoft reported 145 million monthly active years, meaning massive user adoption of its Teams platform, which appears to, in many ways, lead the market. Anyone who is anybody in the industry has a Teams (or multiple) Teams integration(s).
Today, UJET is no exception.
And here's what the integration will mean for the duo's joint users. According to UJET, the native integration will combine what it calls: "sophisticated" CCaaS routing logic with Microsoft Teams UCaaS and all its features. I plan to explore what that means - and more, in the sections below.
What a UJET Microsoft Teams Alliance Means
While not its first, the integration, it is its latest contact center integration with Microsoft Teams. It enables contact center agents to collaborate seamlessly with internal specialists via Teams, with the (hopeful) result of an accelerated query resolution for more complex customer issues - and improved service delivery - UJET notes.
All this is possible by leveraging UJET's advanced routing capabilities, according to Anand Janefalkar, Founder and CEO of UJET, who further notes that it is about reducing friction and streamlining a process that could take a long time in many cases.
The MS Teams integration appears to solve a real and pressing issue in the contact center sphere, as it might have previously meant sending an email or calling to receive an answer from an expert - making the agent and customer wait. Robin Gareiss, Metrigy CEO and Principal Analyst backs that up, noting in a statement that 47% of companies say back-office experts help agents solve complex problems, continuing:
“UJET's integration will make it much faster and easier for experts to help agents resolve complex or unique customer issues. But there is another key benefit: agents themselves; are valuable to providing real-world insights for sales and marketing strategies, product development, and more–and they can easily do that when they’re using an integrated collaboration platform.”
Furthermore, something that might seem odd, but in fact - there's evidence to support it, is that folks don't mind waiting. At least according to a 2022 study titled The State of Waiting in Line, seventy percent of customers prefer virtual lines.
Waitwhile Study - Virtual Line Graph
And almost 70 percent of customers said they are willing to wait in a virtual line, indicating they prefer it over a physical line. What comes (as almost) no surprise is the fact that the same survey by Waitwhile found that folks are less patient than one might assume, with many leaving virtual lines before their turn, speaking volumes and coming with many implications, like losing customers due to poor customer experiences (CX).
Janefalkar, UJET's CEO and Founder hopes the integration will help reduce the chances of things like this happening, noting in a statement:
"By integrating UJET with Teams, our customers can extend the functionality and power of UJET’s contact center platform to experts across the organization for streamlined customer service operations, eliminating friction and frustration for agents and customers alike, enabling faster resolutions and better customer service outcomes overall."
Let's Talk Features: UJET & Microsoft Teams
The interaction has three prominent features that will impact the way agents and platform users interact, productivity, and other elements like customer happiness. First up there is Directory & Presence Sync, which will enable agents to "easily locate and connect with Teams users outside the contact center using the agent directory," according to UJET.
And contact center management, for routing purposes, can leverage the presence sync feature to determine things like agent availability - with the hopes of not overworking agents and getting the right agent to a customer at the right time.
UJET Microsoft Teams Integration
Up next is what UJET calls: High-Quality Voice Service, which they say will ensure "clear and reliable voice communications with carrier-grade voice services." All this, they note: is delivered securely using Microsoft Direct Routing.
One of the express goals of such a feature: to reduce the number of dropped or abandoned customer calls.
And last but certainly not least; is Streamlined Handoff & Resolution, which takes advantage of configurable groups within Microsoft Teams - nixing manual handoffs - while fostering seamless collaboration. UJET says; this is possible, no matter the location or device.
Agents can leverage the tool to route interactions directly to non-agent Teams users to meet support SLAs when needed. In general, UJET has been busy in 2023; back in March, it launched a native workforce management solution. More recently, it partnered with GoGLe Cloud and Alvaria - releasing a cloud contact center integration powered by AI.
UJET is one of the many contact center providers partnering with AI heavy hitters as of late to enhance its AI capabilities, with Zoom also doing as much recently - looking to enhance its CCaaS offering.
In a partnership dating back to last week - Zoom partnered with AI startup Anthropic to enhance several of its principal features in hopes of boosting the overall CX/UX of its (fairly) fresh CCaaS offering. Others, including Dialpad, have partnered with Google Cloud in recent weeks to pull off similar AI-fueled experiences.
UJET - Google Cloud
AI, no matter how much it gets used as a buzzword - appears to show no signs of disappearing anytime soon so now it is a matter of implementing the tool into UCC systems in the most ethical and helpful way possible.
