Using Microsoft Teams To Train Remote Sales Agents

At the close of 2024 I was asked to help solve a problem that was blocking a Teams Phone sale vs GoTo.

Since the hockey stick moment in 2021 when working remotely became more than just a perk, businesses have been forced to adapt technologically, procedurally, and ethically. One such topic has been the ability to train the workforce.

To do this has involved changes to all 3 adaptations, they needed to change the ethos of the company to work in a remote first world, to do that they needed to change their procedures, and needed technology to help them achieve that.

The customer has an outbound sales team. They need to train new sales agents on how to conduct the sales calls, what to say, how to respond to challenges, and how to correctly position the company's products to fit the customer requirements.

Pre-apocalypse this was done in the office on spliced headsets where the trainee would listen-in on the headset wire sitting next to the experienced sales agent as they made the call.

When this had to be done remotely, the company used Microsoft Teams and GoTo to achieve a virtual 'listen-in' capability. They used GoTo, their existing phone system to make the call, and Teams to bring the trainees together in a meeting on the trainer's PC to listen to the conversation.

This worked great.

That is until the customer wanted to remove GoTo as their PBX and move to Teams Phone.

Why?

The Teams client can only be in one call at a time. Whether you're using Teams Phone, P2P call, or a Teams meeting, it consumes the Teams audio channel. Even though Teams can connect on multiple ports, it can only have one active port at any one time.

This means that when you answer another call than the one you're on, the existing call is placed on hold.

So in this case, the trainer created a Teams meeting for the trainees to join. The trainer then shared their screen and system audio, and then placed the PSTN call to the customer using the same Teams client.

As soon as they did that, Teams placed the trainer on hold in the meeting and the trainees didn't hear the conversation.

Solving The Problem.

Fortunately there is a way around the single Teams audio call per PC and you can trick Teams into being able to loop a PSTN call into a Teams meeting for the purpose of listen-in training.

First the trainer PC must have its default audio settings set to the trainer's headset for both speakers and input (microphone) devices.

Then, the trainer can create their Teams meeting invite for the trainees to join as normal. However, the trainer must join the meeting using Teams in a web browser. This is essential.

When they join, they must select the same device as their default system audio input / output i.e. their headset and not in a muted state.

When connected to the meeting, they must then share their screen and include sharing system audio.

Now they are all setup, then can switch back to their Teams desktop client and make the PSTN call using Teams Phone. When they make the call it is essential that they choose the same headset device that is being used in the web meeting as their peripheral.

Once they make the call, the trainer will be able to have a conversation with their customer and the trainees on the Teams meeting will hear both the trainer and the customer.

This is because the USB headset microphone device is being shared between the browser and the Teams client so they're able to hear the trainer speak. The far end customer's audio will share into the Teams meeting through the system audio sharing capability (virtual speaker).

Benefits:

• The end customer is unaware that their conversation is being used for live training
• If the trainees accidentally speak in the meeting, only the trainer will hear them, not the end customer
• Does not need the Teams Premium License (future use)
• Trainer can still call the customer using their DDI and be fully compliant where needed

Other Ways to Achieve it.

I'm not super keen on the method, but it works. The other way today that can be used is to use outbound audio conferencing to achieve it.

With dial out audio conferencing, you'd create a meeting, bring trainees and the trainer into that meeting and when ready, the trainer would dial the customer into that meeting.

Less can go wrong with this method, but the price of this method is suboptimal customer experience.

1. The outbound Caller ID seen by the customer will be a non-company number e.g. a Microsoft shared conferencing number.
2. After 60 minutes, you'll be paying for calls on communication credits instead of your existing Microsoft Teams Phone provider call charges.
3. The customer may hear entry and exit announcements
4. If the trainees speak or unmute themselves, the customer is going to know making it hard for the trainer to control the call experience and conversation.

In the future, I am hopeful that when the Queues App releases barge-in, listen-in, and whisper in Q1 2025 that this solves the problem elegantly without the need for this workaround.

It would be interesting to see this functionality expand to something like a breakout rooms type of thing, where the trainees can pre-join a trainer's listen-in room and the trainer can ensure that all trainees are present before placing the customer call.

But for now, I hope this workaround helps you achieve some degree of remote training flexibility for your workforce.