Teams calling is not a phone system
Microsoft Teams is an excellent way for colleagues to call each other. That is a different problem from running a business phone number, and the gap catches people out.
The TelcoCentric team2 min read
This is an opinion piece, and a slightly unfashionable one: for a lot of the businesses we talk to, replacing the phone system with Teams calling is a downgrade dressed as a simplification.
To be clear about what is not in dispute. Teams is very good at internal calls, at meetings, and at putting a colleague’s presence next to their name. If your telephony need is "people who already work here need to talk to each other", it is hard to beat and you already own it.
The gap is the front door
A business phone number is a different animal from an internal call. It is answered by whoever is free, in an order somebody decided, with a queue when nobody is, and an announcement when the queue is long, and a different behaviour after five o’clock, and a fallback when the internet drops.
That machinery is what a PBX is. Teams can be extended toward it, but every step involves add-on licensing, a calling plan or a direct routing arrangement, and configuration that lives somewhere different from where the rest of your phone rules live.
Three questions that decide it
- Does an outside caller ever reach a queue rather than a person? If yes, you need real queueing, reporting and overflow.
- Does anybody need to see who is on a call, pick up someone else’s ringing phone, or transfer with a word first? Those reception behaviours are where the difference shows immediately.
- What happens to the main number when the internet goes down? A phone system has an answer to this. It should not be "nothing".
The honest middle ground
The answer for many businesses is both, and that is not a fudge. Keep Teams for internal collaboration and meetings, and run the business numbers on a phone system that integrates with it, so a call to the main line still rings the right people and the reception team still has the tools they need.
Consolidating onto one tool is a good instinct. It stops being a good instinct at the point where the remaining tool cannot do the job.
We install both, and we have no particular stake in which one wins. We do have a stake in businesses not discovering the difference in their first busy week.