Verizon Calling Solutions For Microsoft Teams To Support Mobile And Remote Workers

Verizon commissioned Forrester Consulting to conduct a Total Economic Impact™ (TEI) study and examine the potential return on investment (ROI) enterprises may realize by deploying Verizon Calling Solutions For Microsoft Teams.¹ This abstract will focus on improving customer experience including outage reduction and support of mobile and remote workers with the use of Verizon Calling Solutions For Microsoft Teams and its value to their organizations.

• IT director for a healthcare organization in the US with 2,500 employees.

• Project management for a government organization in the United States with 3,400 employees.

• Director of IT for a government organization in the United States with 6,000 employees.

• Global IT service architect for a global technology organization with 50,000 employees.

Organizations are increasingly challenged by the need to deliver reliable, secure, and responsive communication services to both internal teams and external constituents. Mobile and remote workforces require seamless connectivity across devices and locations, yet traditional phone systems struggle to meet these demands. Additionally, compliance with regulations add pressure to modernize infrastructure while maintaining high service standards.

Enterprises are finally delivering a unified collaboration experience for employees by blending phone, mobile, and a cloud-based collaboration platform. In addition to enabling both internal and external voice calls, these services allow organizations to consolidate multiple telephony systems, simplify IT management, reduce costs, reduce the disruptions and performance issues associated with legacy telephone solutions, and improve employee productivity, especially for mobile and remote workers.

Verizon Calling Solutions for Microsoft Teams provides three services for a variety of telephony options with Microsoft Teams. The Verizon Mobile for Microsoft Teams (VMMT) service allows a Verizon wireless number to work across all Teams endpoints (cell phone, tablet, laptop), includes Verizon’s voice quality, and centralizes administration. The Verizon VoIP for Operator Connect (VVOC) service provides telephony capabilities via Teams, simplifying administration and removing the need for on-premises equipment and expensive telephony lines. The Verizon Calling with Microsoft Teams (VCMT) service provides a similar offering to VVOC for the Microsoft Direct connect plan, solving complex problems like integrating with call centers, legacy phone equipment, and third-party Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) providers, which expand connectivity to over 110 countries.

Investment Drivers For Microsoft Teams To Support Mobile And Remote Workers With Verizon Calling Solutions

The interviewees’ organizations adopted Verizon Calling Solutions For Microsoft Teams to support mobile and remote workers. These organizations struggled with several challenges in their legacy environments, including:

• Legacy shortcomings. Interviewees described process inefficiencies which led to slow turnaround times for requests and labor inefficiencies. Phone users commonly experienced disruptions and poor service quality, and there were associated labor costs to apply often-temporary fixes. Having a blend of solutions and carriers led to more administrative effort, more cost, and various support and service coverage challenges. The global IT service architect at a technology company shared, “We had issues previously where it hit a certain time of the day and we were just sitting here like, ‘I guess after a.m., we’ve got to wait till tomorrow to be able to get something resolved.’”
  The project manager at a government organization described the following situation: “We have judge rotation across our court systems, so some of our most important customers are moving every year. That means all of their phones and their computers need to move with them smoothly, which was a nightmare.” They added: “In some of our old buildings, we still have Wi-Fi dead spots. Not needing the Wi-Fi has been a good thing.”

• The need to support mobile workers better. Interviewees described growing mobile worker populations at their organizations, which meant they needed to deal effectively with the challenges associated with previous environments. Mobile workers typically had two phone numbers: a cell phone number and an official office number. Their use of two phone numbers frequently confused other parties or, worse, would lead to calls being marked as spa. Interviewees also shared that their goal for mobile workers was to have seamlessly connected devices, allowing the workers to use the optimal device for the situation, be it a laptop, a tablet, or a cell phone.

Verizon Calling Solutions For Microsoft Teams Features

The interviewees’ organizations chose to invest in Verizon Calling Solutions For Microsoft Teams for the following reasons:

• Significantly reduce the cost of providing telephony services. Interviewees described a wish to obtain significant costs savings by eliminating their organizations’ legacy phone systems, transitioning from most legacy telephony lines to utilizing internet lines, and obtaining labor savings by reducing the technical and user administration of their organizations’ phone system.

• Minimize or eliminate telephony solution disruptions, performance, and compliance issues. Interviewees wanted a telephony solution that had redundancy, offered scalability, and was more resilient than their existing solution. They also wanted a solution that complied better with regulatory and policy requirements.

• Improve the experience of mobile and remote workers. Interviewees wanted a solution that provided more capabilities and more simplicity for the growing number of mobile and remote workers at their organizations.

• Provide central control. Interviewees’ organizations wanted a single solution that provided central control, including administration, strong reporting, and visibility.

Key Results For Microsoft Teams To Support Mobile And Remote Workers

The results of the investment for the interviewees’ organizations include:

Reduced outages enhancing call quality and reliability.

• Enhanced call quality and reliability. Interviewees noted that not only did the new services provide better overall call quality and more reliable connections but they also improved the probability that calls would get routed to the right people — often directly helping retain more business. The IT director at a healthcare company described how they routed calls now when going on vacation: “I can just forward my calls to my help staff or forward my number to a partner … and they can do the same thing when they’re off.”

Supporting mobile and remote workers.

• Administrative and technical staff labor savings of $930,000. Interviewees reported that their organizations were able to reduce their telephony administration efforts through operational efficiencies after implementing Verizon Calling Solutions for Microsoft Teams; they also saw time savings as a result of fewer disruptions and performance issues. Basic administration was improved due to having a single provider, which meant fewer phone numbers to manage, process improvements for onboarding, easier moves and removals, less need for training, and better visibility and control. The interviewees said that disruptions and performance were no longer considered an issue for their organizations. The IT director, healthcare, explained: “It has been great for me because I have full control, and I love that. If someone tells me that a line wasn’t working or the key wasn’t working, I know that I can look into it and resolve it.”

• Employee time savings due to the elimination of phone-related disruptions worth $438,000. Interviewees described experiencing service disruptions with their legacy solutions that frequently lasted for hours. Sometimes, they were unable to resolve these until the next day due to provider support challenges or there not being a simple solution to the challenge. The IT director at a healthcare organization commented: “With our prior setup, my CIO was asking me why I had to be in the room when we had staff to troubleshoot the issues. It was so complex that I had to be there.”

Improving employee experience.

• Improved employee satisfaction. Interviewees shared that employee satisfaction has improved for several key reasons. They said their employees are able to do their job better as a result of optimized device communications optimization and having a single phone number; they also appreciate having consistently reliable service. Interviewees also noted that employees found that they are achieving better work/life balance. The government director of IT described how: “The majority of our workforce is ‘on the move.’ People actually don’t want to be in an office environment — we want them with our constituents.” The IT director at a healthcare organization explained, “Most of our staff are very mobile, so VMMT is the default choice for those employees.” The global IT service architect also explained that, “Minimal disruption and improved support led to positive feedback from internal stakeholders.”

Improving customer experience.

• Consistent customer experiences. Interviewees described how they enabled better customer service by being able to contact customers more reliably as well as transfer and follow up with them more quickly. The IT director at a healthcare company described how their organization’s VMMT and VCMT services enabled employees to give out direct mobile phone numbers because they could now track it within the Microsoft Teams environment, noting, “We’ve absolutely seen better patient care because of it.”