Voice is the most unforgiving channel in business communication. It may seem odd to read that because, as we know, before telephones were invented, everything was face-to-face and involved speech, and then, for most the modern age, a good proportion of business affairs were conducted over the telephone. The internet disrupted this.
Unlike e-mail, messaging or even video, where delays, hiccups or some imperfections tend to be tolerated, voice demands immediate clarity. A garbled sentence or a missed word during an urgent client call adds to the anxiety and stress and can derail outcomes. Hybrid work environments are commonplace, yet voice, the fundamental communication tool, is frequently compromised by fragmented systems. This is a business challenge.
Hybrid work exposes businesses to uneven last-mile connectivity. Office users working with managed infrastructure work alongside home workers, or even remote branch staff, on consumer broadband, fibre or LTE. In the years since the pandemic, businesses have quickly learnt that quality-of-service policies that function well on corporate networks often become ineffective once traffic reaches the public internet.
It goes beyond the internet connection. The range of endpoints has also expanded dramatically to include softphones, desk phones, mobile apps and browser-based clients. It is the job of the business to ensure that all these endpoints, connecting via disparate connections, effectively support different types of users, including those who use a simple browser and desk phone alongside knowledge workers embedded in collaboration platforms. This adds significant complexity for the CIO.
This complexity is challenging to overcome, not least because of the significant costs associated with communication infrastructure overhaul. If the challenges aren’t met, most businesses just continue to run on separate communication systems indefinitely. In other words, telephony remains disconnected from the primary collaboration environment where employees spend most of their day.
Microsoft Teams and voice
Microsoft Teams is now deeply embedded into daily workflows for file sharing, chat, meetings and collaboration. This is great and has had a marked impact on how businesses collaborate. However, in an environment where businesses run two separate communications systems, there is no unified presence, no seamless visibility of colleague availability and no single view of customer interactions across channels. This comes at a massive opportunity cost.
Businesses miss the “golden thread” of the full customer journey. They are simply unable to optimise workflows, and they don’t have the textured and deep productivity insights that reveal how teams actually interact and where hand-offs can be improved. In layman’s terms, the wall between front- and back-office functions remains firmly in place.
According to BMI-TechKnowledge research, South Africa has approximately 1.5 million monthly active Microsoft Teams users, of which only about 51 000 – this is fewer than 4% – have voice capabilities enabled. If we zoom out, according to UC Today, citing Microsoft announcements and industry analysis, there are more than 320 million monthly active Microsoft Teams users, with Teams Phone PSTN voice enabled for just 26 million users by the end of 2025.
In South Africa, 96% of Teams users in businesses are missing out on native voice, and globally that number is slightly improved to 93%.
If one talks to businesses across the length and breadth of the country, the barriers to adoption are consistent. First, there is significant technical complexity, often requiring teams of specialists, extensive configuration and management of additional infrastructure. There’s the issue of additional licensing requirements for phone-system capabilities and exceptionally high setup costs. Together, these barriers are an obstacle too high for many organisations.
Strategic simplification
However, this is precisely where strategic simplification of cloud telephony becomes a competitive imperative. What does strategic simplification mean? It means enabling voice to live natively within the primary collaboration environment where people already work. By doing this, businesses eliminate context-switching and finally deliver a single view of all interactions. All those businesses working on Teams have this option available to them with the right partner.
Simplification in this context is strategic because it removes the friction at the exact points where businesses lose time, efficiency and money. It creates resilient communication ecosystems that accommodate both on-premises and hybrid work, irrespective of whether users are on a desktop in the office or on a mobile device at home. It is strategic because by adding this functionality within the primary collaboration environment, businesses enjoy seamless integration of call history, compliant recordings and dispositions into existing systems of record. In addition to this, what might seem simple is actually critical. Businesses can do this by keeping their existing numbers, thereby avoiding disruption.
The benefits of calling into Teams
The benefits are both immediate and foundational. High setup costs that previously hampered progress are reduced dramatically. Very importantly, operational disruptions from parallel systems disappear. Productivity insights become visible to the business, which can tell, in real time, which teams are interacting effectively, where workflows are lagging and how customer journeys unfold. Every business wants a satisfied customer with a positive resolution. Now they can see exactly where this is working or going awry. In other words, customer experience improves through a complete, unified view rather than repeated explanations by exasperated agents and frustrated clients, across channels.
We know many teams have gone back to the office. But not all teams are at the office daily. South Africa has embraced hybrid working at scale. This means that the infrastructure and cultural foundations to support hybrid working are in place. Strategic simplification, the decision to bring voice into the Teams environment where collaboration is already happening, is the decisive next step towards resilient, cost-effective and insight-rich communication.
Technology in the cloud has evolved to the point where calling into Teams is far simpler than businesses think. There’s simply no reason to continue allowing voice, the most unforgiving medium, to remain a business’s weakest link.
The Call2Teams solution is a simple add-on software-as-a-service (SaaS) solution that sits between any Teams Phone, Telviva and Microsoft Teams. By integrating Teams with Telviva, you can manage voice calls, video meetings and team chats, all from a single platform. This integration enables features like call forwarding, voicemail, and switchboard access directly through Teams, enhancing productivity and communication across your organisation. Contact us today to get started.
About Telviva
Telviva is a market leader in cloud-based communications and strives to enable better quality conversations for businesses through context-driven unified communications as a service (UCaaS) and contact centre as a service (CCaaS).
Seamlessly integrating voice calls, PBX, videoconferencing, instant messaging, contact centre and business intelligence into one single service, Telviva simplifies collaboration, boosts productivity and enhances customer experiences. Delivered as a managed service, the secure solution integrates with CRMs and other cloud tools, providing historical context for informed interactions. Learn more at www.telviva.co.za.
- The author, Rob Lith, is chief commercial officer at Telviva
- Read more articles by Telviva on TechCentral
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