Microsoft has transformed what organisations can achieve with Teams Phone. What was once considered a simple telephony platform now includes many of the capabilities organisations traditionally expected from a contact centre.
With recent Frontier releases, Microsoft has continued to invest heavily in native Customer Experience (CX) capabilities, introducing richer call queue management, improved supervisor tools, AI-powered automation, enhanced reporting and tighter integration with Microsoft Copilot.
For many organisations, this raises an important question: "Do we still need a dedicated contact centre solution, or is Microsoft Teams enough?"
The answer depends on your customer experience strategy.
Only a few years ago, Microsoft Teams Phone could provide basic Auto Attendants and Call Queues.
Today, Teams includes:
This means many organisations can now deliver an excellent customer experience without purchasing a traditional contact centre platform.
But "good enough" isn't always enough.
As customer expectations grow, businesses often require more sophisticated routing, reporting, omnichannel engagement and AI capabilities.
That's where dedicated CX platforms come into their own.
→ Things to consider
Native Teams works extremely well when your requirements are relatively straightforward. However, larger organisations often need:
Luware Nimbus builds directly on Microsoft Teams. Rather than replacing Teams, it extends it into a fully featured contact centre while allowing agents to continue working inside the Teams client they already know.
Many organisations find Luware provides the ideal balance between simplicity and enterprise capability.
Dynamics 365 Contact Center represents Microsoft's enterprise customer engagement platform. It combines voice, digital channels, AI, Copilot and customer service management into a single cloud platform.
This platform becomes particularly powerful when combined with Dynamics 365 Customer Service and the wider Microsoft Power Platform.
|
Capability |
Teams Phone Native |
Luware Nimbus |
Dynamics 365 Contact Center |
|
Auto Attendants |
Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
|
Call Queues |
Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
|
AI Voice Agents |
Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
|
Skills-Based Routing |
Limited |
Yes |
Yes |
|
Intelligent Routing |
Basic |
Advanced |
Enterprise AI |
|
Omnichannel |
Limited |
Yes |
Yes |
|
CRM Integration |
Basic |
Yes |
Native to Dynamics 365 |
|
Workflow Designer |
Limited |
Yes |
Yes |
|
Supervisor Tools |
Good |
Excellent |
Enterprise |
|
Live Dashboards |
Basic |
Advanced |
Advanced |
|
Historical Analytics |
Basic |
Advanced |
Enterprise |
|
Quality Management |
Limited |
Yes |
Yes |
|
Customer Journey Management |
No |
Yes |
Yes |
|
AI Copilot |
Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
|
Best For |
Simple Voice |
Teams Contact Centre |
Enterprise CX |
One size doesn't fit all. We've seen organisations spend far more than necessary on enterprise contact centres when Microsoft Teams would have met every requirement. We've also seen organisations outgrow native Teams surprisingly quickly because customer expectations evolved.
Our approach is different.
We start with your customer journey, business goals and operational requirements, then recommend the platform that delivers the right balance of capability, simplicity and long-term value.
Sometimes that's Microsoft Teams. Sometimes it's Luware Nimbus. Sometimes it's Dynamics 365 Contact Center. The right answer depends on your business, not the software.
As a Microsoft Solutions Partner with deep expertise across Microsoft Teams Phone, Luware Nimbus and Dynamics 365 Contact Center, Aura helps organisations:
Whether you're modernising an existing call centre or building a global AI-enabled customer experience platform, we'll help you deliver a solution that's right-sized for your organisation today, and ready for tomorrow.