Microsoft Teams Insider

Teams Contact Center Options, Chris Goodwill's Perspective

October 31, 2023 Tom Arbuthnot
Teams Contact Center Options, Chris Goodwill's Perspective
Microsoft Teams Insider
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Microsoft Teams Insider
Teams Contact Center Options, Chris Goodwill's Perspective
Oct 31, 2023
Tom Arbuthnot

In this podcast episode, Tom Arbuthnot and Chris Goodwill discuss the impact of AI on contact centers and the opportunities it opens up for innovation and improvement in content centers.

  • AI will have a significant impact on contact centers in terms of driving efficiencies and improving customer experience.
  • Quick wins in the B2C space include using chatbots for simple tasks like waste collection or ordering recycling bins.
  • Digital transformation is essential for contact centers to drive better customer experiences and satisfaction.
  • The use of AI in contact centers can lead to cost savings, skill changes, and job opportunities in different areas.
  • Microsoft has introduced Dynamics Contact Center platform and Digital Contact Center platform (DCCP) to provide contact center solutions.
  • Dynamics Contact Center platform is tightly integrated with Dynamics CRM and offers voice and omni-channel capabilities.
  • Partners and customers need to understand the options available, leverage the best solutions, and stay open to the evolving contact center market.

Thanks to Ribbon, the sponsor of this episode, for your continued support and making it possible for us to produce content like this. 

Show Notes Transcript

In this podcast episode, Tom Arbuthnot and Chris Goodwill discuss the impact of AI on contact centers and the opportunities it opens up for innovation and improvement in content centers.

  • AI will have a significant impact on contact centers in terms of driving efficiencies and improving customer experience.
  • Quick wins in the B2C space include using chatbots for simple tasks like waste collection or ordering recycling bins.
  • Digital transformation is essential for contact centers to drive better customer experiences and satisfaction.
  • The use of AI in contact centers can lead to cost savings, skill changes, and job opportunities in different areas.
  • Microsoft has introduced Dynamics Contact Center platform and Digital Contact Center platform (DCCP) to provide contact center solutions.
  • Dynamics Contact Center platform is tightly integrated with Dynamics CRM and offers voice and omni-channel capabilities.
  • Partners and customers need to understand the options available, leverage the best solutions, and stay open to the evolving contact center market.

Thanks to Ribbon, the sponsor of this episode, for your continued support and making it possible for us to produce content like this. 

Tom Arbuthnot:

In this Teams Insider podcast, Chris Goodwill of Cimity gives us his perspective on the Teams Contact Center market. He's really deep in that space and talks to lots of the vendors. He's going to give us a perspective on the three different Teams Contact Center options, the benefits of a deep integration with Microsoft Teams, where partners add value in an increasingly SaaS Contact Center world, and also where does Microsoft Dynamics Contact Center platform play. Thanks to Chris for his great insights and many thanks to Ribbon Communications, this month's podcast sponsor. Really appreciate their support. On with the show. Hey Everybody welcome back to the pod really excited for this one I've got Chris Goodwill. Chris and I talk a lot offline, but i'm now getting him on the pod, So we're going to get it all on the record. Chris for those that don't know you I know you've been in the space for a long while. Do you just want to introduce yourself?

Chris Goodwill:

Yeah, sure. Chris Goodwill and I've worked in the Microsoft UC space for about 15 years for a couple of systems integrators. I work at Symity now. I'm a strategic partner manager and solution specialist. That's my current role. I'm primarily focused on voice and contact centers.

Tom Arbuthnot:

So obviously Symity very deep into the Microsoft voice and contact center space. What I really want to dig into today is your perspective on the Teams contact center market. So maybe we could start with the three models. What are those three partner models? Because We've just done some research. There's 22 certified contact center vendors, but they're not, all equal. So what are the different models?

Chris Goodwill:

Yeah, the marketplace has changed dramatically and the connection models that Microsoft have certification there are three. So there's Connect. That's the first one that's been well established, really. And lots of vendors stepped into the market with that whatever cloud based offering they had. So that's leveraging Microsoft Certified Session Border Controllers, SBCs, and direct routing to connect into the Microsoft Teams phone system infrastructure. And that gives them the ability to integrate and control, etc.

Tom Arbuthnot:

It's relatively basic that integration is, it's basically direct routing, so they're pumping calls to Teams. So that's the media channel. might have some plug-ins to understand presence or call control, but from a media perspective, it's a phone call shooting into Teams, essentially.

Chris Goodwill:

Yeah, and we've had some solutions where you've had double pop. So because it isn't so tightly integrated, you answer a call in the contact center and you also answer it in Teams and Teams client or tromboning of calls. So two legs when going out coming back into the contact center from SBC to the vendors' SBC. So yeah, it's well established and it works. But the exciting developments are coming with the next two models. So the first ones extend and there are contact centers now that are purely extend. So they've been architected in that way. There are some that have retained their connect model and they also have an extend model. So they have the two options depending on clients' requirements. So that is integrating with the Teams client and the Teams client platform. So using graph API and that enables them to have a much better and richer call control, kind of experience for the customers. So it's much more tightly integrated. It's not just the connecting via SBCs. And there's been, I would say the marketplace are more comfortable in terms of customers. In terms of that tight integration, that's what people want. It's not to say that the connect model isn't valid. But this tighter integration gives a much richer experience in Teams.

Tom Arbuthnot:

I think for my personal opinion, if you're going to go down the Teams Contact Center route, the benefit is that tight integration. So like, you say Connect is tried and tested, but it's just firing a phone call to a different client. Whereas with Extend those vendors are more invested in tightly integrating now that the thing is they're dependent on Microsoft's API coverage So they can only do what Microsoft lets them do to a certain extent But also they inherit all the benefits of Microsoft's API coverage. So as Microsoft add things those contact centers are getting more and more powerful.

Chris Goodwill:

Yeah. And that's as we've seen with the development of Teams and the release of things, it's very agile. It's constant. We're not back in the ages of quarterly updates. Things are constantly being added. So that adds challenge for the vendors to keep up with that. But at the same time, they're developing and they're waiting on the developments with the API. So yeah, benefits and some disadvantages whilst they're reliant on Microsoft.

Tom Arbuthnot:

And like you say, it's an interesting choice for a customer as to if someone has Connect and Xtend, there's a hedge there of I could go either way if I wanted to. With a company that's all in on Extend and doesn't have a traditional contact center, they're much more committed to Microsoft, their business is living and dying via Microsoft, and some vendors, they have that option and they have a dozen other platforms they support and a dozen other vendors. So it's just thinking about, for your choice, you're going with someone who's all in on Microsoft, who's hedging, who's got two options, who's got three options? Let's talk about the third option

Chris Goodwill:

Yeah. So that's Power. Aptly named, and um, it's not, it's not available

Tom Arbuthnot:

it's been on the documentation for about two and a half years, like, it's a weird one, isn't it, because.

Chris Goodwill:

It It is, yeah. And that's the next level again on from Extend. So using Software Development Kit, the SDK that's going to enable vendors to create services that are purely based on Azure-based voice applications. I know from the marketplace, like you guys do in market analysis and for myself contacting all the vendors that are certified actually is that's in, in the throws of being developed.

Tom Arbuthnot:

So Yeah, this is using Azure communication services. So Microsoft's platform for media. So everything that's underlying Teams is obviously infrastructure. Microsoft repackaged that infrastructure, it's the same infrastructure but they sell it to partners to use as Azure communication services. So the benefit here is you're literally using the same media, engine, whatever you want to call it, MCU as Teams. But Microsoft still haven't quite clearly articulated to partners how you tick that box and get certified when the SDK is done. So there are vendors using that model today. You could definitely say they are Power, but from a pure, does the documentation say they're Power point of view, there's zero, that are tick box for that.

Chris Goodwill:

And just going back to what you were saying about certainly from a client perspective, what we've seen is that with the move to Teams phone system by a tremendous amount of clients now and leveraging Microsoft services just generally. Where there was this, it seemed to be this landscape where people were using lots of different solutions and integrating them. So going out to get best value here, best value there. But there seems to be this kind of consolidation and rationalization now, where for customers who are absolutely investing in Microsoft, they're seeing significant benefits of that, and of, we know Copilot's coming, having your data in Azure. Having a contact center that's tightly integrated. All of those things are going to bring tremendous benefit. So there is almost a kind of, I don't know, like a decision point. Now, I think as we start to go through these next kind of 6 to 12 months, pace of change is amazing. I was talking at a colleague yesterday about that. Never seen it so fast. And there are integrations, there's open APIs for contact centers so you can integrate CRMs, ITSM, whatever, workforce management systems. But actually, the power, I think anyway, with Microsoft is going to be having a truly integrated system. And that just drives huge efficiencies. For example, just talking about that, some use cases is with some clients at the moment, you've got a situation where in kind of social care or in law firm, for example, someone's phoning in with case details and someone's taking notes of what's going on that call. So traditional voice call. They listen, they write notes, call ends, and then they spend 45 minutes to an hour and a half writing up those notes into CRM. With either leveraging Dynamics 365 for example, you've got a situation where that call takes place, it's recorded, it's kept in Azure, it's transcribed. If it's in another language, it can be translated then that transcription is then injected into the CRM and it's there. It's just done. So the time savings are just phenomenal. That's just one small use case really

Tom Arbuthnot:

interesting that use case, because I think that's not what people when they think of contact center, they think of agents, headsets inbound, maybe outbound, but the lines are blurring here where a lot of the contact center platforms are, like you say, scaling into, line of business scenarios the AI and the ML and the, stuff you can do with ACS, all the cognitive services. That's where the people that are more deep in the Microsoft world, the kind of Extend to Power level. They're starting to gain all these benefits of cognitive services, like the, word block matching and looking for credit card codes and all kind of stuff you get the benefits of.

Chris Goodwill:

Yeah, the Azure Cognitive Services, we're doing quite a lot of work on that including things like sentiment analysis. So leveraging the service and that enables informed responses from agents. And as we get into leveraging AI that can even be looking at that call, looking at that chat that's going on. If it's web chat or whatever, seeing how the customers responding and then prompting with an appropriate response. So the days of having a script, the script is going to be dynamic now and it's going to be automated and driven by AI. And again, going back to the Microsoft play is having true integration and your data in the right place is going to drive real efficiencies. I think the days of, the buzzword bingo has been around for ages, isn't it? We've been talking about AI, ML, chatbots came along. They've been okay. They're getting better now. But with the advent of chat GPT fall and the large language models now, it's just here. So the biggest challenge though that we see with customers and as you said, then the traditional contact center almost is going to be a thing of the past because an organization can leverage it across their whole organization. So back office like you say, line of business applications, like how Everybody uses and surfaces data. There's still that point of contact for the customer into the organization, whether that's through voice, whether it's through email, whether it's through chat, web chat, SMS, social media, for example. So Omnichannel is really, again, Omnichannel we've talked about for a long time. It's absolutely here. And for organizations that are looking to distinguish themselves from their competitors, then they need to embrace that because the personal world into the work kind of environment is just completely blended. An example of that would be for myself, a printer, HP printer alongside me here has a problem. Go to the website, end up on a chatbot, put it some information in. It gets too complex, elevates it to an agent on chat, gets too complex again, gets elevated to a voice call. Voice call, then they solve the problem. They're going to send out another cartridge to me cause this one doesn't register and then it just arrives in the post. I've had an SMS and I've had an email. Job done. But with HP, I have to say that was amazing. Such an amazing experience because they thought about the customer journey and looped it all together in an omnichannel kind of way.

Tom Arbuthnot:

that's a really good example in the kind of B2C world, like how impactful do you think AI is going to be on contact center in general? I've got thoughts, but I'd love to hear your perspective. You're working with a lot of different customers, a lot of different verticals. Is it here now? Is it still coming? Is it still a story? What do you think?

Chris Goodwill:

I think it's still coming. The technology's here. It's how people leverage it, it's how organizations leverage it. And our responsibility in technology as partners, systems integrators, is to help them uncover that really. And it requires almost a step back and a holistic view of their organization. As we were saying about back office and different departments that traditionally, you could have a sales and customer service and IT service desk. But actually, what's that customer journey? Where is the data? and how we can drive efficiencies, and AI is definitely going to bring that. The challenging thing, I think, from working with local regional government, there are quick wins, things like chatbots to do your waste collection or to get a new recycling bin, those kind of things. So some obvious use cases, but then it requires business units, business owners, leaders, to look at that. One of the councils we work with took time during COVID. To really look at digital transformation again, buzzword, bingo, it's been around forever. But what does that mean? But they looked at in depth, different parts of their business, where the touch points were with data and their customer, and what they wanted to do with that to try and drive a better experience for the customer. And as a result of that, we can then help them through consultancy and design and proof of concept, even if required with cognitive services. to be able to show them what they can do. So beyond the normal kind of IVR options, etc. And even some of the things I've described with translation and transcription, they are definitely here. You can just utilize them. It's the more complex things and the omni channel handoff as well. is deflection, for example, so through using AI, being able to recognize the intent, recognize what the customer is asking for. All we really want is our question or our query answered effectively. We don't want to be put in a queue forever. We don't want to be frustrated with the chatbot. So to get the customer experience, customer satisfaction, customer retention. All of these things whether it's in the B2B or B2C world, we just want to be happy with the service we've got. And AI will definitely drive that. So that's the customer experience side of things. The flip side is then budget and spend. So cost savings, I don't necessarily see it as just a headcount reduce. I think there will be headcount reduce, but I think then there'll be jobs in different areas and a skill change.

Tom Arbuthnot:

Yeah, I think it's going to be a big scale up of that industry because I think it gets rid of the script level contact center where like I'm only allowed to say yes or no at this point. I ask you for account number, I type it into the screen. I ask you for when you ship the product, I type it into a screen. That bit will get replaced on some timeline I'm sure. And I think It's the reason I'm bullish on AI disrupting contact centers more than any other vertical is the general experience in contact centers as a user is pretty poor. So the bar is low and the technology is good enough to meet that bar. I think one of the challenges with chatbots was they were so rigidly scripted. If you invested in it properly, you could do a really good job, or if it was a really obvious thing like you say, recycle bins, great example, like you can only order one or not those are your two options, you can check when it's shipped, you can tell us if you got it or not it's a very easy pattern, but the thing that's potentially interesting about AI is the level of interpretation you'll get where you say give us your account number, and it can reliably Grab that number, put it into the CRM, look up information but it doesn't displace everybody because there's still going to be those edge cases where you need human logic to work out the problem.

Chris Goodwill:

This is an opportunity for organizations with contact center staff to upskill, retrain and use those people not for the mundane. So it's the mundane we need to go away. They enter the data, an account number or case number or whatever. They get to the right person. They have a complex requirement. And it's not to say that still isn't a human to human interaction, but all that key information that person needs to be able to answer that customer's query is already at their fingertips. And this is where the integration with platforms, instead of having multiple windows, they're just using Microsoft Teams and they have an embedded contact center in it and the data is drawn out of Dynamics. And that's the really powerful bit. I just remembered actually with Microsoft just to say, so we've got the certified contact centers. We have got Microsoft themselves who've stepped into the contact center.

Tom Arbuthnot:

Yeah, let's dive into that. That's great.. Confusing for the market because now you've got teams obviously teams in the box for capability Which isn't really contact center, but has call queues and groups So it's very low end you could get away with it Then you've got partners that overlay that for reporting advanced routing certified and some of those are very Big traditional contact centers, Genesis, Nice, and some of those are dedicated Teams focused companies. And then now you've got Microsoft coming in first party with Dynamics Contact Center platform. So I know you've been digging into that. Let's talk about that.

Chris Goodwill:

I have, yeah. So it's, in all the years I've worked with Microsoft UC from back to OCS and Link in the back of my mind, I've always thought Microsoft is surely going to create a contact center products and. They've leveraged ISVs, and they have this certified camp, and they add tremendous value because one, they compete against other to develop their products to make them as good as they can, and it gives options. But it is, as you said, like 22 certified contact center vendors, how do you distinguish from those? We have certified vendors doing their thing. Microsoft, naturally, I think, have seen the opportunity. And with Dynamics 365, this is where the players come. So rather than a brand new product, brand new SKU, like Copilot or Viva, etc., what they've done quite cleverly, I think, is they've tapped into their existing Dynamics base or for clients who are looking for a new CRM, and they've added voice, and now they've added omni channel. And so as we were describing this tight integration, which is possible with the certified vendors through connectors and API into Dynamics or Dynamics itself can handle voice and omni channel. So that is really interesting. So It's a bit of an ask for some customers, though, who have a well established CRM that is not Dynamics to shift everything.

Tom Arbuthnot:

Yeah, I think that's a really key point is Microsoft are tightly coupling their context and story to Dynamics. So if you're a Salesforce shop or another shop and the CRM, XRM market is very diverse as well. There's not one, kind of scenario. So it's very well suited to those that are using Dynamics. If you're not using Dynamics. You wouldn't use Dynamics contact center'cause that's, that it's too tightly integrated.

Chris Goodwill:

The interesting bit, which is is around but not well understood, is the digital contact center platform. So D C P from Microsoft. And what that is, even for myself, as soon as it was announced some time ago, I thought, Oh, it's here. This is this

Tom Arbuthnot:

Yeah. It was a big, it was a big kick in the markets. Everybody's thinking Oh, Microsoft's coming. Then, the behemoth is coming for our market, but it's been a bit of a slow roll.

Chris Goodwill:

And it's definitely evolving. And I think we're going to see potentially next year, the kind of. firmer offering, but at the moment what it is just to describe it as I understand it anyway, it's a framework architecture. If you look at the pages on Microsoft's website for digital contact center platform, there's some diagrams, there's information, but what it does is it brings together. Some of the Microsoft offerings to enable partners to be able to architect and design a contact center, purely using Microsoft technologies themselves. So it is a compete with ISVs. What it enables is really powerful customization. So you need to have the dynamics customer service bit, you've got the voice and the omni channel. You've then got, you're using Azure communication services, so things like cognitive services we were talking about. Then with their acquisition of Nuance, you've got things like biometric scanning. It's a digital engagement platform that is well established in its market.

Tom Arbuthnot:

Lots of other contexts use that, technology for things like when you've found your bank and they try and do voice password recognition, that kind of thing. That's that kind of, technology. That's a real gem in Microsoft's arsenal in terms of context into muscle.

Chris Goodwill:

It is. Yeah. Alongside that, you've got like power virtual agents as well. So you've got the enablement of automation And the final bit of that is Azure ID now. Entra isn't it? Entra ID, new name.

Tom Arbuthnot:

And just you describing it there really well explains this is not a SKU. This is not a hundred dollars a seat contact center. It's a toolkit. It's a great partner opportunity because it's not a SKU. It's have a consultative conversation, work out which components you're going to use and how you're going to use it. Some of those components are per user. Some of those are consumption based. It's a new model I found when talking to contact center. No buyers, like the contact center manager, a lot of them, Amazon have been pushing into this market with connect and build pure consumption base. So I wouldn't say it's unheard of, but they're typically looking for a feature set and a SKU. Not here's my toolkit. Like you say, digital transformation, taking it seriously versus just buying a solution. It's a big conversation.

Chris Goodwill:

It's the next level. It's not a small, medium sized org play at all. We principally work with large enterprise. At the moment, I'll be completely honest, there's not a huge... a sort of inbound interest. It's more, I think, for us with Microsoft.

Tom Arbuthnot:

They don't know to ask for it, do they, either? The market isn't aware of it yet.

Chris Goodwill:

Yeah, they don't. So it's us taking that message to them. And with some of the larger orgs and central government, for example, or multinationals that we're working with, there's absolutely the opportunity. Like you said, how do we add value? Things constantly shift and change. The consultancy around even phone system today with direct routing offerings, etc. It's a busy marketplace and how do you generate business yourself? So I think the dynamics customer service play, I think that's going to evolve. It's solidified now. Someone that Microsoft said that to me, it's matured from them creating it. It's a bit like the Managed Service Offering with MTRs, it was established, it was developed, R& D comes out, someone has some crazy, clever idea. We see this product launch, we then see it mature, and they're at that maturing stage with that. And with the digital contact center platform itself, you think about it, all the building blocks are there within Microsoft for essentially a certified contact center, but it is. An opportunity for partners to offer in depth consultancy, deployment, adoption, and then obviously a support wrap as well, hopefully. But yeah, it's interesting. We've got these layers going on, ISV market really busy. They're also leveraging AI services themselves. We've then got the dynamics customer service layer, and then we've got the more complex digital contact center platform. If someone wants something relatively simplistic in terms of a contact center as a service offering, then really they'd be foolish not to go for a product that's certified, that gives them what they need. But where there's these more complex requirements, and we do see it in, bids and tenders. That come through. There's obviously these organizations who are looking at differentiating themselves and they want to almost understand the art of the possible. We're at that stage now. So we were talking about is AI really here? Yes, it is. We need to now consult. And describe and design things for clients and to drive efficiencies. It's a really exciting time.

Tom Arbuthnot:

It's so exciting. There's so much energy in the context of the market. I feel like in the UCAS market, obviously that's Mine, yours background to a large extent. Like it's been a massively innovative world over the last 10 years. The pandemic just accelerated that, but everybody understands it. Everybody on the street knows what Teams is. Everybody does online meetings. It's not the revelation of 10 years ago when you're like, look, presence, look, we can video call each other from home. Whereas contact center it's a slower moving market. Most of it is still on prem, not a lot of it is cloud. There's so much potential for innovation, for service improvement. Like it's a massive opportunity.

Chris Goodwill:

It's not. And I think one piece of advice I'd give to partners and to customers really is I hear like lift and shift and I don't think it's just lift and shift. It could be initially. So if there's an on premise product and it's coming to end of life and they need to strategically tactically and move to something. So we just need to get things working. So yeah, move them to voice. Maybe they got email as well. Get it working. As I keep on saying internally, what's the phase two with the customer? What's the next stage to get them thinking about that? Some of it is being able to walk before you can run, so not doing too much at once, and even with these large orgs where they have planned out digital transformation, we look at the low hanging fruit, the quick wins, the things like the chatbots for waste, etc, or for potholes, for example. Those things are relatively simple now, they're not complex to do, and that chatbot needs to be developed, needs to be ethical, all of those good things. In terms of the other areas of the business, you've invested in Microsoft, you've invested in a contact center that's certified by Microsoft. How do you leverage it? How do you gain those efficiencies? And, more recently we've seen in local regional governments and challenges with budgets and spending things. And contact center is definitely an area where they can improve service for customers, they can drive down costs, they can improve productivity.

Tom Arbuthnot:

Yeah I would agree, it's like a slam dunk of improve and save money. I think it's rare anybody with a contact center could say there's not room for improvement there because that's one of those areas where just because the technology has added so much in the last 24 months as well. that's where Microsoft is interesting, both in the extent of power. And in DCCP is the billions they're putting into open AI. Everybody's going to inherit those capabilities. And I don't think that means there's one solution because I think it will get very verticalized as in this is really good for the, like you said these line of business scenarios like legal transcription or sales. And there'll be many opportunities or for customers to roll their own combination of user,a contact center and extender.

Chris Goodwill:

In the legal sector, I've spoken to a couple of clients, actually regionally down here in the Southwest of England and they have already invested in Dynamics. They'd already done that. They've made that move, which for them, beneficial, obviously now and they're almost ahead of the game. And you can see that they are going to differentiate themselves in the marketplace and the cost saving, time savings we were talking about. In terms of case updates and things, just being able to be given to a customer, what's the state of my legal case, for example, they just get that information. It won't require a message to be taken on a piece of paper and someone phone them back and the information is going to be surfaced. Obviously there are other solutions in the marketplace, but where customers really, truly. They've embraced Microsoft UC, now if they embrace Azure and Dynamics then yeah, they're going to see benefits. Or, sorry, just flipping, is with a certified contact centre. That's going to integrate with, so they might, I'm not suggesting everyone's going to move to Dynamics.

Tom Arbuthnot:

Because Dynamics is not the biggest platform, and Dynamics in itself is a huge investment, like in terms of changing your business process. But you can, like those examples you said it could be Dynamics, but it could AI platforms, like that's the benefit of an ecosystem. Maybe something great gets done with Meta's AI or Facebook's AI, conceptually you could pull that into your ecosystem conversation. That's what APIs are all about.

Chris Goodwill:

Yeah. So we talk about this architecture with DCCP, but similarly there's opportunities with certified contact centers whereby we need much more advanced reporting, for example, and there are products in the marketplace who will add that. We've then got payment systems, and want to be able to take that compliantly. Some of the contact centers have some of these more advanced functions built in, workforce management is a whole different world. And some of the certified products have that, but equally, some of them don't. For a systems integrator or consultancy with Microsoft, there's this opportunity to look for the best of breed to be able to produce what they want without the need to, if you look at. Digital contact center platform, there's a whole huge upscaling there, so the dynamics play a lot of us have come from the Windows server worlds and then Azure and then UC and security. Dynamics is a whole different beast and it's really complex to understand that.

Tom Arbuthnot:

And that's one of the challenges Microsoft have is the Dynamics partners have already paired up with another contact center because they're like we use Nine or Genesis or whatever for that piece. And then the traditional voice partners have probably already got a contact center and don't know Dynamics. So it's a rare partner that's bringing these two worlds together. It's quite exciting.

Chris Goodwill:

But the cloud based services that, the certified contact centers, the analytics and reporting tools, the payment products that are out there, again, you can create essentially a bundle that will meet the customer's requirements and enables. A chop and change as well, depending on the commit that they can change to another system in the future. But the challenge, as I said, is it's not necessarily just a list of requirements, the scope of work anymore. I don't think, I was talking about this yesterday to the students, it's understanding the actual needs of the business and the needs of their customers and the requirements then fall out of that. But it's not just this lift and shift, right? What does our contact centre do now?

Tom Arbuthnot:

We had 10 agents before, we want 10 agents now and we're changing the software so much more.

Chris Goodwill:

There was there's a charity it was speaking to. And a pharmaceutical actually this week and it's how do you work now? This is actually in another country in Europe and culturally they're used to just voice and fax. The fax word was used, I was like, Oh my God, and they're dealing in a huge volume. Like a huge volume as a pharma company and with pharmacies and health organizations that they work with for order taking. But it's hang on a minute if you get that email in. We can handle that in an omni channel contact center. So to some degree, there's digital transformation and there's cultural change as well. And all of that change brings challenges and I think people have been working in contact centers in the same way for a long time now.

Tom Arbuthnot:

Yeah. Yeah. It's a very traditional space. And like you said, that innovation is ready. Chris, thanks. Thanks for sharing with us. It's always good to get a perspective from somebody who's doing this for real at scale with different customers. Everyone should follow Chris on LinkedIn. He drops loads of good insights around contact centers and he's doing these contact center CVs as well.

Chris Goodwill:

Thanks Tom.

Tom Arbuthnot:

If people want to find out more from you or Symity, what's the best thing to do, Chris?

Chris Goodwill:

I would just connect with me on LinkedIn is the best way I think. Direct message me on there. And or equally go to Symity's website, symity.com. Contact us on there There's information, we're a Microsoft M365 specialist Teams. So you'll see our kind of meeting room offer contact centers, voice and app development and security actually. So yeah, but just get in touch. Always happy to give a point of view and learn from others as well.

Tom Arbuthnot:

Thanks, Chris. We'll talk again. Great.

Chris Goodwill:

Cheers, Tom.