4 Reasons Microsoft Teams Voice is the Best Phone System for Remote Working

Business telephone systems have come a long way over the last century – from manual switchboards to traditional landlines to now using the internet for calls. This progress has been accelerated by COVID-19, which has forever changed the way we work.

During and post the pandemic, many companies have had to rethink their business models and adjust their ways of working. So, going into a physical office five days a week just isn’t feasible for many organisations. As a result, we’re seeing more and more companies embracing fully remote work or implementing a hybrid working model. Given how important it has been for employees to be able to work from anywhere, it’s not surprising that Microsoft Teams saw a huge increase in users during the pandemic, rising from 20 million users in November 2019 to 44 million in March 2020, then rising again to 75 million in April 2020.

As Microsoft Chairman and CEO Satya Nadella explained in the company’s Q4 FY21 earnings announcement in July 2021, “Teams usage has never been higher. We have nearly 250 million monthly active users as people use Teams each day to communicate, collaborate and co-author content across work, life and learning.” To that end, 24 organisations now have more than 100,000 users of Teams and nearly 3,000 organisations have more than 10,000 users.

For one, it’s more cost effective to use Microsoft Business Voice if your company has adopted a fully remote or hybrid working model. Traditionally, you would need to invest thousands of pounds into a new business phone system. With Microsoft Business Voice, that could translate into upwards of £10,000 in savings in a year.

But that’s just the start of the benefits. We have outlined four key reasons your business should replace your traditional phone system with Microsoft Business Voice and why it’s the best choice in the post-pandemic era of remote working.

1: Save time by unifying your communications and productivity channels within one application

Millions of companies around the world already rely on Microsoft for productivity apps (i.e. Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, SharePoint, OneDrive), messaging (i.e. Teams), email (i.e. Outlook), cloud services and server architecture. So, it makes sense to bring your business phone system under the Microsoft umbrella too as these applications and services were designed to work best together.

Because Business Voice is part of Microsoft 365, it delivers a modern voice solution that combines seamless communications with collaboration capabilities. Not only will this help you be more productive and collaborative, but it will also enable you to save time and money by using a single solution.

Business Voice can be accessed anywhere, through a desktop, laptop, tablet or mobile, giving your team the flexibility to work from any location, through any device whilst still delivering the necessary service to your customers. If you have a Microsoft 365 subscription that includes Microsoft Teams, it’s simply an addition to your existing Microsoft 365 system. And when you adopt Microsoft Business Voice, you can fully integrate it with other Teams features like messaging, meetings, emails and documents, which enables your teams to work more seamlessly and efficiently.

2: Get major cost savings through bundled call minutes

Because our Microsoft Business Voice package includes bundled minutes into each subscription, you don’t have to worry about paying for local, national or mobile phone calls.

Key benefits include:

• 3000 minutes of UK 01, 02, 03 landline and UK mobile calls, per user, per month
• Bundled minutes are pooled across all of your users

 3: Rest assured with advanced security and compliance capabilities

Whenever an organisation moves to cloud-based anything, there are always security risks and considerations to take into account. But your customers don’t have to worry about them with Microsoft Business Voice, as Microsoft Teams is built on the Microsoft 365 and Office 365 hyper-scale, enterprise-grade cloud, delivering advanced security and compliance capabilities that your customers expect.

More specifically, Microsoft Teams enforces teams-wide and organisation-wide two-factor authentication, single sign-on and encryption of data in transit and at rest. Files stored in SharePoint are protected by SharePoint encryption. Beyond these security capabilities, Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) is available for Microsoft Teams, allowing you to determine if content shared in SharePoint and OneDrive are malicious and, if so, block the malicious content from user access. That means you can give your employees more freedom to do their work from anywhere and perform to the best of their abilities without worrying about compromising security.

4: Monitor and improve call quality to drive better business relationships

Although many organisations have shifted to a fully remote or hybrid working model over the last 18 months, the need for strong connectivity on calls with employees, customers, partners and vendors has increased more than ever. With Microsoft Business Voice, you can use call analytics and the Call Quality Dashboard to analyse the quality of calls and troubleshoot problems as they occur.

Call analytics shows detailed information about the devices, networks and connectivity for calls and meetings conducted by each user in Microsoft Teams. Call Quality Dashboard, meanwhile, gives your Teams administrators a network-wide view of call quality across the entire organisation. Combined, this information can be valuable for your Teams administrators, as it can be used to troubleshoot ongoing issues and improve the quality of future calls across the organisation, which can impact the quality of customer, employee and partner relationships, trust and loyalty.

Want to know more?

To learn how Business Voice can work for your business or to request a demonstration of the product, please contact us today.

Alternatively, sign-up for our free trial here.