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Email completely transformed the way we work and deserves a lot of credit for its contribution in bringing the world into the information age and it remains a much-used tool in businesses the world over.
However, as technology has matured, the tools knowledge workers favour for communication and collaboration have shifted and diversified. This shift was in favour of faster means of communication with more bandwidth for sharing information quickly.
With the birth of VoIP (voice calls over the internet), video calling and instant messaging, business applications for these tools were investigated more fiercely. Out of these investigations, ever more capable collaboration platforms for businesses were born. Microsoft Teams is one example.
If you’re solely using email and voice calling for your business communications, you should know that there are decades of innovations you could be leveraging for the growth of your business. Let’s look at some of the reasons why you might consider switching from email to a platform like Microsoft Teams.
More Than Just Messaging
Where email remains one-dimensional, Microsoft Teams offers a full suite of communication mediums from a single app window. These include video messaging, voice calls, instant messaging and screen sharing mediums, which integrate strongly with Microsoft Office products.
The large number of options allows for more nuance in the ways businesses communicate. What’s more, members of your team are sure to find a tool that’s a great fit for their personality and preferred style of working. More introverted members of the team are allowed to flourish with instant messaging, screen sharing and integrative collaboration. Those who prefer more information-rich input will prefer voice and video conferencing.
However you cut it, one of the core strengths of Microsoft Teams vs email is that it gives people options and flexibility.
Instant Messaging for Business
We’ve all embraced instant messaging in our personal lives, but it makes a lot of sense in a business context too. Microsoft Teams brings a professional form of instant messaging to an enterprise, allowing for a faster pace of collaboration without having to leave the Teams app.
Important to note is that enterprise-grade instant messaging applications are a far cry from an app like WhatsApp.
Whilst WhatsApp is favoured by individuals because it provides end-to-end encryption for messages sent, there is no access control when it comes to who can join a group or who can message you. If someone gets ahold of your number, they can message you until you block them.
For businesses, this simply won’t do. That’s why some form of administrative control over who has access to what is crucial and this is what unified communications platforms like Microsoft Teams provide.
Integration with the Microsoft Suite of Products
Microsoft Office products like Word and Excel still have a staggering user base, with many job adverts stating that close familiarity with these applications is a prerequisite for application. We’d also be willing to bet that, if yours is an organisation of Windows users, you're heavily reliant on Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, and the rest – whether you use it internally or to communicate with external stakeholders.
The truest power of Microsoft Teams is that it integrates seamlessly with all of these tools, making collaboration on documents and spreadsheets easier than ever. Anyone can post a document to a group chat for peer review, whereupon any one of those peers can open that document and make comments and suggestions. These suggestions are visible in real-time to team members, who can then jump on a video conference to discuss those comments. All of this can be done without ever leaving the Teams app.
This makes Teams a wonderful experience for Microsoft Office power users because all of the software you’re familiar with flows seamlessly together. By creating a frictionless environment, Microsoft Teams makes collaboration easier and more efficient. Whilst email serves as a means of communicating and sharing documents, it offers nothing like the seamless, real-time experience of a platform like Microsoft Teams.
Where Microsoft Teams Falls Short
Email really does seem to be losing the battle to these new technological improvements and as we think more carefully about the future of work, it seems inevitable that all organisations will eventually move to an integrated and fully-featured unified communications experience.
However, all of its advantages as a platform aside, Microsoft Teams is not perfect. There are aspects of business communication that Teams, unfortunately, fails to succeed in delivering to a standard acceptable to modern businesses.
For detailed call statistics and features like multi-level IVR menus, you'll have to look elsewhere.
Perhaps most importantly, Microsoft Teams’ phone system has received criticism for being costly, underpowered and lacking in features. No one likes to spend more to get less but, with Microsoft phone system, many businesses have been doing just that and are being left with a sub-par caller experience.
For businesses that want to hold onto the very real advantages of Microsoft Teams while powering up their phone system, a solution is available.
Direct Routing for Microsoft Teams
Known as Direct Routing for Microsoft Teams, a capable VoIP phone system is linked with Microsoft Teams in the backend and calls are routed directly from the Microsoft app through the third-party provider. This allows for cost-effective calling and the powerful features necessary to build a caller experience that works for your customers instead of against them.
You can use Yay.com's Direct Routing integration to pair Teams with our powerful VoIP platform, giving you access to unlimited call recording, multi-level IVR menus and sophisticated call queues to name a few. This is a quick, cost-effective action you can take today to permanently upgrade the caller experience for your customers and improve the efficiency of your call handling.
