Microsoft Digital Contact Center Platform: It’s About Time!

Alright, Microsoft announced their Digital Contact Center Platform at Inspire in July! So, Microsoft’s finally entered the contact center game, right? Well… not really. Microsoft has actually been in the contact center for around 20 years.

The contact center was one of the early entry points for Microsoft into large enterprises. Twenty-something years ago, .NET and SQL Server weren’t considered “enterprise grade” solutions like Java, Oracle, and Sun. But, these so-called enterprise solutions created a problem for contact centers; the new end-user apps often caused average handle time (AHT) to go up, significantly raising the cost of customer service for the business.

Enter Microsoft. Microsoft owned the desktop and browser. And the new .NET framework made it easier than ever for developers without C/C++ backgrounds to work with the Win32 API, perform IE DOM manipulation, and create rich “smart client” experiences. Seeing an opportunity to take advantage of the AHT problem enterprise software vendors created, Microsoft and Accenture joined forces to develop a framework to help contact centers address the AHT problem, and I was a part of that team.

The framework went through various names, starting with call center framework, then contact center framework, and finally customer care framework, but it was always CCF. Our team had a slogan: “It’s About Time!” Of course, this refers to the key problem we were solving in helping enterprise contact centers reduce AHT. (Note: We were focused on reducing AHT, but after deploying CCF, our customers realized additional benefits in improved first contact resolution, reduced time to train new agents, improved agent retention, and increases in revenue.)

The framework was wildly successful. It was deployed at some of the largest global telco and banking clients. Since these contact centers often were up 24x7x365 and processed millions of transactions a day, the framework helped prove Windows Server, SQL Server, and Microsoft could scale to meet enterprise demands.

But, every story has a villain, and success could be your enemy, especially in the pre-Satya days at Microsoft. Since CCF leveraged user interface integration, or what is often referred to today as robotic process automation, some influential technical leaders in Microsoft felt the solution was “lipstick on a pig” and not the right technical approach. Even though other technical options didn’t solve the problem or produced a negative ROI for our customers, those leaders killed the framework. However, around the same time CCF was shut down, a new visionary leader joined Microsoft to lead the Dynamics product organization. This leader soon resurrected CCF and integrated it into Microsoft Dynamics, where it’s known today as the Unified Service Desk.

That’s a long-winded way of saying, Microsoft’s been around the contact center block for a while. Microsoft has actually had all the “contact center platform” blocks for over a decade (e.g., CCF and BizTalk before Power Automate, TellMe before Nuance, Microsoft acquired a chatbot AI technology that had next best action and language translation way before Power Virtual Agents, and so on). Thus, to me, the announcement is just that; a marketing statement to educate customers and partners and reconfirming the vision Microsoft has for the contact center.

Let’s recap: Microsoft has been in the contact center game for around two decades and Microsoft has had all the building blocks for a contact center platform for at least a decade. So, why aren’t more customers already using Microsoft as an end-to-end contact center solution?

First, from my own experience years ago, there was a lack of interest and support across the product teams for contact center. This seems to have changed and maybe the acquisition of Nuance was the catalyst. Next, I think many customers and partners simply weren’t aware of how Microsoft’s platform applied to the contact center. I think the announcement and ad blitz – my LinkedIn feed has a Microsoft contact center ad every other scroll – will quickly change this. Finally, contact center delivery capability. Does Microsoft have the partner ecosystem to deliver contact center solutions? I think this has been and will be the big hurdle to get over, so let’s dive into in a little more detail.

Microsoft’s contact center platform has a lot of technical blocks to integrate. They have partners that know the individual technology blocks, and some partners that know them all. Contact center expertise is also required to successfully deliver this solution. Microsoft announced partnerships with organizations like ttec that know the immense people, process, and operational complexities unique to contact center. But where does the delivery capability for both intersect (i.e., partners with deep Microsoft platform and contact center expertise)? Of course, there are the big SIs, but are they going to scale down to the middle-market or smaller internal contact centers, which is where I think the full end-to-end platform might be the best fit. (Note: I am assuming the partnerships with Genesys, Avaya, and NICE are for enterprise contact center customers, and I am further speculating that this is because Teams and Voice Channel aren’t ready for enterprise contact center telephony scale.)

This challenge is a great opportunity for Microsoft’s delivery partners and probably one of the reasons it was announced at Inspire. However, winning and successfully delivering will require partners to make a significant investment in contact center expertise, assets, and offerings. In my experience most Microsoft partners want to see the wins before they make the investment.

Don’t get me wrong. I was very excited to see and read the announcement. This is a great story and solution for contact centers. In my current role, I have the opportunity to speak with and learn from contact center leaders every day. Contact center leaders have longed for an in-a-box solution that offers communications (voice, chat, etc.), customer engagement, AI, and automation all from one technology partner. Contact center leaders are tired of the “we partner for that” story. It just leads to trying to get a multitude of customer experience tech vendors to work together and the integration layer is often the customer service rep. All this just adds to the stresses of managing a fast-paced, overburdened contact center. Microsoft is in a unique position to forever solve this problem…and it’s about time! ??