Microsoft Teams has become one of the most widely used business communication platforms in Australia and globally. For many organisations, it is already the place where staff chat, meet, call, collaborate, and work across desktop and mobile.
At Arrow, we find that a large percentage of our clients are already using Microsoft Teams in some capacity — often for internal chat, video meetings, collaboration, or internal calling. The attraction is obvious: it is familiar, easy to use, and already part of the Microsoft software stack many businesses are paying for.
So, a Natural Question Comes Up: Can Microsoft Teams Be Used As a Contact Centre?
The short answer is yes — but how you do it matters.
For businesses that want simple calling, Microsoft Teams Phone can be a good starting point. But for organisations that need contact centre functionality — including queues, reporting, supervisor visibility, omnichannel customer engagement, call recording, artificial intelligence insights, and integration with customer systems — Teams on its own may not deliver everything required.
That is where Arrow’s approach comes in: combining the simplicity and user adoption of Microsoft Teams with the power of the 8×8 unified communications and contact centre platform.
Why Microsoft Teams Is So Popular for Business Communications
Microsoft Teams is popular for a few very practical reasons:
Arrow’s Microsoft Teams Voice service is designed around this exact idea — enabling businesses to transform Microsoft Teams into a complete business phone system with voice calling and collaboration from one central platform.
Where Native Microsoft Teams Voice Can Become Challenging
While Microsoft Teams is excellent from a user experience perspective, many businesses find that managing Teams Voice and contact-centre-style requirements natively can become more complex than expected.
1. Administration can be difficult
Managing call flows, queues, ring groups, users, and changes inside the native Teams environment can require specialist knowledge. In some cases, administration may involve PowerShell scripting or more advanced Microsoft Teams configuration experience.
2. Reporting and analytics may be limited
Many organisations want clear visibility into call volumes, missed calls, queue activity, staff availability, call outcomes, and service performance. Native reporting may not go far enough for businesses that rely on customer calls as a critical channel.
3. Supervisor tools may not meet operational needs
Contact centre supervisors often need live wallboards, custom views, queue performance, agent activity, coaching tools, call monitoring, and quality management. These features are essential for improving customer experience and managing teams effectively.
4. Advanced AI and call insights may require additional tools
Features such as call transcription, summarisation, sentiment, topic identification, and quality insights are increasingly important. Businesses want more than call logs — they want actionable intelligence from customer conversations.
5. Omnichannel support is often required
A modern contact centre is no longer just voice. Customers expect to engage via email, SMS, web chat, WhatsApp, and sometimes social channels. Arrow’s cloud contact centre solutions highlight omnichannel support across channels including web chat, social media, email, and SMS.
Where Native Microsoft Teams Voice Can Become Challenging
While Microsoft Teams is excellent from a user experience perspective, many businesses find that managing Teams Voice and contact-centre-style requirements natively can become more complex than expected.
1. Administration can be difficult
Managing call flows, queues, ring groups, users, and changes inside the native Teams environment can require specialist knowledge. In some cases, administration may involve PowerShell scripting or more advanced Microsoft Teams configuration experience.
2. Reporting and analytics may be limited
Many organisations want clear visibility into call volumes, missed calls, queue activity, staff availability, call outcomes, and service performance. Native reporting may not go far enough for businesses that rely on customer calls as a critical channel.
3. Supervisor tools may not meet operational needs
Contact centre supervisors often need live wallboards, custom views, queue performance, agent activity, coaching tools, call monitoring, and quality management. These features are essential for improving customer experience and managing teams effectively.
4. Advanced AI and call insights may require additional tools
Features such as call transcription, summarisation, sentiment, topic identification, and quality insights are increasingly important. Businesses want more than call logs — they want actionable intelligence from customer conversations.
5. Omnichannel support is often required
A modern contact centre is no longer just voice. Customers expect to engage via email, SMS, web chat, WhatsApp, and sometimes social channels. Arrow’s cloud contact centre solutions highlight omnichannel support across channels including web chat, social media, email, and SMS.
This Is Why Many Businesses Ask a More Specific Question:
Can we keep the simplicity of Microsoft Teams, but add mature contact centre capability behind it? Yes — and that is where the 8×8 and Arrow solution becomes powerful.
The Best of Both Worlds: Microsoft Teams User Experience + 8×8 Contact Centre Power
Arrow delivers a solution that allows users to keep working inside the familiar Microsoft Teams interface while the back-end communications engine is powered by 8×8.
For the user, the experience is simple: they continue using Teams on desktop or mobile.
For the organisation, the benefit is much bigger: access to a mature unified communications and contact centre platform with advanced calling, queueing, analytics, artificial intelligence, integrations, supervisor tools, and omnichannel capability.
8×8 describes its Microsoft Teams portfolio as adding reliable global phone service and Teams-certified contact centre capabilities to enhance collaboration in a single app.
8×8 Contact Center for Microsoft Teams is positioned as a Microsoft-certified contact centre solution with skills-based routing, real-time Teams presence, call recording support, and integrations with platforms such as Dynamics 365, Salesforce, Zendesk, and ServiceNow.
Key Benefits of Arrow’s Teams + 8×8 Contact Centre Approach
1. High user adoption
One of the biggest reasons this model works is that staff already know Microsoft Teams.
There is no major behaviour change. Users can continue to make and receive calls, collaborate, chat, and use meetings from Teams. For many businesses, this significantly improves adoption and reduces training requirements.
2. Unified Communications and Contact Centre on one platform
With 8×8, businesses can combine Unified Communications as a Service and Contact Centre as a Service on one platform. Arrow and 8×8 position this as connecting teams and customers on one complete cloud communication solution.
That means general staff, customer service teams, reception, sales, support, and supervisors can all be supported in one communications environment.
3. Easier onboarding and offboarding
Integration with Microsoft identity and directory services helps simplify user management. For growing or multi-site organisations, this makes onboarding, offboarding, and role changes much more manageable.
Instead of treating phone systems and collaboration tools as separate environments, businesses can create a cleaner and more controlled user management process.
4. Better queue and call-flow management
Call flows, queues, routing rules, and supervisor views can be managed through more intuitive web-based tools.
This matters because customer service environments are not static. Teams change, rosters change, call flows change, and businesses need to adapt quickly without needing complex scripting or specialist intervention for every adjustment.
5. Supervisor visibility and reporting
A mature contact centre needs strong operational visibility. Managers need to see live queue performance, staff availability, call activity, customer wait times, missed calls, and service trends. They also need configurable dashboards and wallboards that match how their business operates.
8×8 adds deeper analytics, supervisor tools, and contact centre visibility than many organisations can achieve with native Teams alone.
6. AI-powered customer conversation insights
Modern contact centres are increasingly powered by artificial intelligence. Features such as call transcription, summarisation, sentiment analysis, topic identification, and quality insights help supervisors and managers understand what is actually happening in customer conversations.
8×8 also offers AI automation capabilities for contact centres, designed to automate routine tasks, provide real-time insights, and support agents with context-aware guidance.
7. AI Studio and automation
8×8 AI Studio adds another layer of opportunity. It allows businesses to build conversational and agentic AI agents natively on the 8×8 platform, without specialist developers or separate infrastructure. This opens up use cases such as:
- virtual receptionist
- after-hours call handling
- customer triage
- frequently asked questions
- booking or appointment workflows
- service request intake
- escalation to the right person or team
Because AI Studio is native to the 8×8 platform, it can be connected to the same communications and contact centre environment rather than operating as a disconnected AI tool.
8. Full omnichannel contact centre capability
A Teams-integrated contact centre can go beyond voice. Depending on the configuration, businesses can support customer interactions across:
- voice
- email queues
- SMS
- web chat
- AI agents
- CRM-connected workflows
This is important because customers increasingly expect to contact businesses through the channel that suits them — not just through the phone.
Who Is This Best Suited For?
A Microsoft Teams and 8×8 contact centre solution is ideal for organisations that:
- already use Microsoft Teams heavily
- want to reduce software platforms and simplify communications
- need better call queues, routing, and reporting
- want supervisor visibility and live queue management
- need call recording or compliance features
- want CRM integration
- are exploring AI agents or automation
- operate in sectors such as health, finance, education, professional services, real estate, not-for-profit, or multi-site businesses
It is especially compelling for businesses that want the simplicity of Microsoft Teams for users but the power of a mature contact centre platform for managers, supervisors, and customer-facing teams.
So, Can Microsoft Teams Be Used as a Contact Centre?
Yes — Microsoft Teams can be part of a contact centre strategy. But for most organisations, the best outcome is not relying on native Teams alone. The strongest model is combining the familiar Teams user experience with a proven contact centre platform such as 8×8.
That gives businesses the best of both worlds:
Arrow helps businesses design, implement, and support this model across Australia.
If you are considering Microsoft Teams Voice, a Teams-integrated contact centre, or a full Unified Communications and Contact Centre platform, Arrow can help you understand what good looks like and design a solution that fits your business today and into the future.
