AI-Powered CX: From Contact Centre to Company-Wide Care – Jurgen Hekkink, Head of Product Marketing, AnywhereNow, discusses
Contact centres have long been the heart of customer service, essential for maintaining customer satisfaction. Traditional call centres relied heavily on human agents for all interactions. Now, AI adoption is revolutionising this landscape, transforming roles and seamlessly integrating front and back office operations for a more efficient and connected customer experience.
How adaptation of AI is slowly changing contact centre operations
Contact centres are starting to rely heavily on AI functions acting as intelligent co-pilots to the organisation, handling routine inquiries, automating administrative tasks such as data entry and summarisation, and delivering real-time insights like sentiment analysis and “next-best actions”. This AI-assisted approach enables contact centres to achieve their business goals by optimising efficiencies and productivity.
It also allows human agents to focus on more complex, high-value interactions that require empathy, critical and sometimes creative thinking, problem-solving, and the ability to build relationships. Humans don’t just read words; they read between them. They excel in emotional intelligence, woven from memory, instinct, and experience, which is essential for delivering the sort of experience we, as users and customers, have come to expect.
This also means more people across the organisation, particularly those in the back office are now involved in resolving queries, with less of an emphasis on ‘pure’ front-end contact centre agents being needed as AI slowly replaces the initial call phases and can handle the simpler, more standard interactions.
Using Microsoft Teams collaboration infrastructure for customer service applications
Microsoft Teams plays a pivotal role in enabling this level of AI-assisted interaction. Its widespread adoption and robust communication features provide a unified and familiar platform for contact centres to utilise. It is widely accepted as the UCaaS platform of choice, linking everyone across the organisation together.
Furthermore, when combined with a natively integrated cloud contact centre solution like AnywhereNow, this enables everyone across the organisation to be involved in customer services. This allows organisations more flexibility, scalability and agility to get the best possible person involved in handling the calls and to deliver the customers directly to the right department within the organisation to handle their request.
Teams integrates collaboration tools and centralises communication channels, including voice, chat, video, and file sharing, into one platform. This means there are no longer gaps between front-office contact centre agents and back-office workers, specialists, and other departments. The contact centre becomes embedded into the business so the right people with the right skills are directly involved in delivering the best service.
Anybody in the organisation can be embedded in the customer service delivery
With the right tools, anyone can collaborate in real-time, access customer records, document libraries, and other shared knowledge to resolve customer issues faster without switching between systems. Teams’ cloud-based architecture ensures scalability and flexibility, while built-in security and compliance features support regulatory requirements. By embedding contact centre workflows into everyday collaboration, Teams transforms customer service into an all-encompassing, connected experience across the organisation.
But it doesn’t stop there, Teams enhances the agent experience by creating a unified, intuitive workspace that streamlines communication and access to data. Collaboration, handovers and transfers all happen natively in Teams with seamless connections between all participants, either AI or humans. It removes any disconnect between information and reporting data or monitoring which has been a persistent problem with siloed contact centre infrastructure.
With this approach, where contact centre capabilities are natively integrated into Teams, and where AI provides assistants to the agents, customer service can now be placed throughout the organisation to the departments and people with the best skills and knowledge to handle these enquiries.
Staying connected wherever they work
With hybrid work models the norm today, Teams also facilitates flexible working by enabling communication and collaboration from any location. Its cloud-based platform supports remote and hybrid teams, ensuring agents stay connected and productive regardless of where they work. This also enables supervisors to monitor activity and provide remote coaching, as well as manage workflows remotely.
Most notably, remote and hybrid contact centre agents now have access to advanced AI-driven tools and platforms designed to support their work. These capabilities help agents respond faster, personalise interactions, and automate routine tasks. With Teams as the central hub, contact centres gain a unified environment where AI enhances both customer experience and contact centre efficiency, driving smarter decisions, reducing handling times, and elevating service quality across every interaction.
The importance of low-code and no-code implementation
In this environment, low-code or no-code implementation is crucial in accelerating AI adoption, particularly in industries, where time-to-market, compliance and operational efficiency are non-negotiable. This approach reduces reliance on developers, speeds up deployment, and lowers the risk of errors. It’s especially useful for automating routine tasks, integrating systems, or customising user experiences without deep technical expertise.
Traditionally, deploying AI solutions has required significant technical skill and lengthy integration cycles, which are not scalable for today’s dynamic contact centres. Low-code or no-code implementations empower non-technical users to create solutions quickly and efficiently. It allows domain experts, whether in compliance, customer support or operations, to activate and iterate on AI use cases without relying on scarce engineering resources. With a low code, no code development platform contact centres can easily customise workflows, design the AI assistants as well as integrate into the CRM and back-office applications.
The future of the AI-driven collaborative contact centre embedded in Microsoft Teams
The contact centre landscape is evolving into a model of human-AI collaboration, where intelligent automation enhances agent performance.
AI handles repetitive tasks, surfaces insights, and supports decision-making, allowing agents to focus on complex, human-centric interactions. Microsoft Teams plays a crucial role in providing an integrated, cloud-based platform that unifies communications across the organisation.
Combined with low-code/no-code design tools, this enables even non-technical users to drive innovation and accelerate deployment, helping contact centres deliver faster, smarter services that delight and retain customers. With the help of AI, contact centres can involve every department and Teams provides the perfect infrastructure to connect customers, AI agents and human agents across the business.
Jurgen Hekkink, Head of Product Marketing, AnywhereNow
Founded in 2010, AnywhereNow is a Netherlands-headquartered and fast-growing provider of Customer Experience SaaS solutions. AnywhereNow empowers voice and digital dialogues for organisations worldwide and brings to life Agentic AI platforms for increased productivity and effectiveness. AnywhereNow’s products are award-winning, recognised by industry analysts, and trusted by over 2,000 global customers, including Rabobank, DHL, Emirates, KPMG, Swarovski, Mazda, Deloitte, Aldi, Vodafone and Zeiss.
