Is the Queues App for Teams enough for your business? See how it compares to a Teams Contact Center

What is the Microsoft Queues App?

The Queues App is a Teams-native application that is designed for collaborative call handling. It allows incoming calls to be placed in a variety of different queues, from where they can be picked up by any ‘opted-in’ team member. Team members can opt-into (or out of) available queues, and supervisors can also do this for them.

As a Teams-native app, it’s easy to collaborate with other team members by chatting or calling them. Each agent can also make outbound calls on behalf of the queue or auto-attendant, and view their own call queue metrics.

Typical Queues App use-case scenarios

It’s important to note that the Microsoft Queues App is not a contact center. However, it does offer some enhanced functionality compared to Teams Calling-only.

Typical use-case scenarios for the Queues App might include:

• When a small Team must collaborate to answer queries about a complex product
• Where a combination of various specialist (niche) expertise is needed to solve issues
• Provision of internal support (e.g. IT or technical support) for other teams your organization

As you might expect, the size of your organization and the role of your team will be a big factor in whether this is a suitable solution.

How does Teams + Queues App compare to a Microsoft-certified Teams Contact Center?

The Queues App offers many of the call routing and queuing capabilities used by call center and contact center solutions, but it also misses certain features that many businesses will need. It’s essential to understand the features and functionality of the Queues App. It’s only with this knowledge that can you determine if it can support your customer contact requirements today or in the future. 

The below table summarizes the features currently offered by the Queues App, and how they compare to the ROGER365.io Microsoft-certified Teams Contact Center:

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Future development of Queues App

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As highlighted above, the Microsoft Queues App is still some distance from being a contact center. It lacks the required functionality for handling larger call volumes: it has limited reporting, no visibility of call history for supervisors, and it currently lacks key integrations like CRMs and AI.

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However, the Microsoft 365 product family is well-supported and new capabilities are being added all the time. The Queues App is no exception, and it’s expected to continue adding new features over the coming years. These should include things like ‘monitor, whisper, and barge’ and improved reporting – but the release dates for these are still not clear.

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In many ways, the Queues App is ‘playing catch-up’ to existing Teams-native CCaaS solutions (including ROGER365.io). These already possess much more advanced capabilities, and they’re also continuously adding new features. So, while we can expect the Queues App to also add some features in the coming years, it’s unlikely that it will ever catch up to more comprehensive solutions from established Teams Contact Center solutions.

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Is the Queues App the right solution for your organization?

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Perhaps the biggest advantage of the Queues App is the Microsoft framework it’s based on, because it offers enhanced calling functionality within the secure and compliant Teams app.

This proven infrastructure is the reason why Teams-native solutions like ROGER365.io have selected Microsoft as the basis for their technology. It ensures that you have a single environment for all your processes, resources, contacts, integrations, and workflows – making work easier and more productive.

Ultimately, the question of which solution is the right fit for your organization’s needs comes down to your requirements. If you only need a basic capability to put incoming voice calls into a queue and solve issues collaboratively, then the Queues App may be enough for your needs.

However, if you need a solution for handling omnichannel customer contact efficiently at a larger scale (or where you need to integrate knowledge resources, automations, and AI into your processes), then a Teams-native Contact Center may be a better solution.

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FAQs

What is the Microsoft Queues App?

The Microsoft Queues App is a Teams-native queuing capability that allows team members to easily collaborate and solve issues within the Teams client. It provides basic queuing functionality, real-time queue insights, and basic reporting. Agents can view their own call history, but Supervisors cannot view all call logs and it lacks many of the features needed to handle larger call volumes efficiently.

Is the Microsoft Queues App Teams native?

The Microsoft Queues App is a Teams-native App, which is available for Teams Premium subscribers. It can be pinned to the left hand side of the Teams App, so team members can view the queue with a single click.

How does the Microsoft Queues App compare to a contact center?

The Microsoft Queues App has been compared to a ‘lite’ version of a contact center, because it has some of the familiar contact center features like queuing, auto attendant, and call transfer, but it also lacks many of the essential features a modern contact center needs such as customizable automations, CRM integrations, AI capabilities, call recording, and detailed analytics.

What integrations does a contact center need?

A modern contact center needs certain key integrations to serve customers properly, including: CRM, call recording, voice call transcription, AI capabilities, and omnichannel support. Without these integrations, your organization’s ability to handle larger volumes of queries efficiently is greatly limited and the customer experience will suffer.

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