Microsoft Teams Phone System: Should our company use it?

It’s been decided… your company needs a new phone system. And this Microsoft Teams Phone System thing is sounding pretty good.

“Hmmm… Our company uses Microsoft Office 365, and Microsoft Teams. So, wouldn’t it be easy to use the Teams app, for our phone system, too? Isn’t that where this whole “Unified Communications” thing is headed?” You think to yourself.

“This way, our employees can have one app on both their desktop and mobile phone, for chat, collaboration, video conferencing, and phone calls… and it all integrates seamlessly with Outlook.” You continue.

“But will it work that easily?” You ask.

As a business VoIP broker, I’m seeing this question a lot these days. And it makes sense, on many levels. But my answer is “no, don’t do it”… kinda.

I have three reasons: 1) Customer service; 2) 3^rd Party Alternatives; and 3) Missing functionality.

Customer Service

Question 1: When installing your current phone system and phone lines, how much hand-holding did your company need from your vendors. A lot, right?

Question 2: During any given year, how many times does your company currently need to contact customer service from either your phone hardware or dial-tone company? At least a few times, I’m assuming?

Question 3: How critical is it when your phone system or phone lines are having issues? Pretty critical, right?

Question 4: What’s been your experience with Microsoft customer service for Office 365? Pretty hands-off, and automated, I’m assuming. Nothing against Microsoft but it’s not a secret their strategy is for their customer service to, primarily, have more of a self-service approach.

Conclusion: That’s a bad combination, in my opinion. A business-critical, high-maintenance service that needs a lot of hand-holding, being sent to a vendor who prefers you figure it out, on your own.

3^rd Party Alternatives

Don’t worry, it’s not all doom and gloom. There is an alternative to having Microsoft provide Teams Phone System to your company, directly. There are several hosted VoIP providers who offer their service, delivered over a native Teams Phone System platform.

That means you can purchase the service from an established hosted VoIP provider, who is a phone system expert (and used to the high-touch, hand-holding your company will need), but still get the Teams interface.

So, if Teams Phone System is the solution your company is looking for, going with a 3^rd party hosted VoIP provider, providing your Teams service from their servers (sitting in their data centers), gives you the best of both worlds: The solution you want and the customer support your company needs.

Which providers offer this? Click here if you’d like to search for hosted VoIP service providers who offer a native Teams or Skype for Business platform.

Missing Functionality

As nice as Microsoft Teams Phone System sounds, I have to burst your bubble just a little bit. In my opinion, the features, functionality, and ease-of-use is not yet to the level of the top hosted VoIP service providers.

For instance, using basic features like barge-in, call queues, call recording, call reporting, contact center features, and more are either missing, wonky, or require additional software from a 3^rd party.

If your company simply needs is to pick up the phone and dial a number… and doesn’t need any other feature… then Teams might be okay. Most decent-size organizations, however, need more than that. If so, Microsoft Teams Phone System is probably not the best solution for your company’s phone system.

The good news is many of the top hosted VoIP providers integrate very nicely with Microsoft Office 365, Teams, and Skype for Business. For many organizations, this integration is a good enough reason use Microsoft Teams for collaboration but use a separate hosted VoIP vendor (who specializes in phone systems), for PSTN calling.

Have questions? Need some recommendations or quotes on hosted VoIP solutions for your company? We are one of the largest and longest-standing business VoIP brokers in the US, and I love talking about this stuff. Request a Quote or call me, to tell me about your company’s needs. 877-465-3505

About the Author
Mike Smith is the Founder and President of AeroCom and has been helping companies with telecom and cloud services since 1999. He has been the recipient of numerous business telecommunications industry awards and in 2011, he was honored as one of the top 40 business people in Orange County, CA., under 40 years old. Follow Mike on LinkedIn, Twitter or SpiceWorks.