The Record - Issue 18: Autumn 2020

103 is ideally suited to customer-facing businesses who want to build a highly responsive, interactive and productive customer service environment. The core concept of Teams is around bringing everything – including people, conversations, content and tools – together. Users can share assets like calendars, files and emails in real-time. Moreover, because it is cloud-based, it is easy to access from any location and on any device. The collaboration platformhas really come into its own in the recent pandemic. As with most of the world’s workforce, contact centre agents have had to set up offices from their dining room tables. The collaboration and integration of the contact centre with Teams means ‘business as usual’ for their customers. Agents can answer calls, pull in experts and have access to docu- mentation to provide answers or share with cus- tomers, all from the comfort of their own home. These collaboration capabilities mean staff can work from anywhere in the world, which contributes to job satisfaction and helps retain their skills within the business. All this capability helps make the customer service team much happier too. It reduces fric- tion in the process and agents have the peace of mind of knowing that they can draw on the expertise of the wider team and, by using the latest collaborative technology, can get relevant information back to the customer faster. And the old saying: “the happier the agent, the happier the customer” continues to hold true. In today’s complex customer interaction envi- ronment, collaboration is key to delivering the best possible customer experience. Thanks to the emergence of the latest communications hub-based technologies, that kind of collab- oration is increasingly within reach for most businesses today. Jeremy Payne is vice president of marketing and alliances at Enghouse Interactive