As small and medium businesses (SMBs) continue to engage with customers, it’s important to give employees the best tools for doing business with customers and partners, as well as collaborating with colleagues.
For many companies, remote selling and communicating has become the norm. It is expected to be the most dominant sales strategy by 2024 due to shifts in customer preferences and remote-first engagement*. Meeting prospects and presenting your product or services through video or phone meetings removes all geographical barriers, eliminates time zone and border issues, and reduces carbon footprint. This also gives more schedule flexibility on when parties can meet. Such calls also allow you to record, transcribe, and follow up more easily afterward to better move the sale along.
To help SMBs improve their collaboration, Microsoft is now making it easy to buy and adopt Microsoft Teams Essentials and Microsoft Teams Phone at the same time with a special promotional bundle and a choice of calling plans. Available in the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom between July 17, 2023, and July 1, 2024.**
Promotional offer for Teams + Teams Phone
Together, Teams and Teams Phone combined offer unmatched video, chat, file sharing, and voice over IP (VOIP) and public switched telephone network (PSTN) calling—providing powerful, unified communications abilities to your organization to run business and grow your business.
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“We've been delighted by customer adoption of Team Essentials since we launched it in December of 2021. By now bundling it with Teams Phone, we are giving our customers, especially SMBs, a very attractive value proposition to power their internal and external collaboration on Teams, which 300M monthly active users already love.” —Danny Bernstein, Group Product Manager, Teams |
Teams Essentials is a stand-alone, cloud-based Teams app, for SMBs who do not have an active Microsoft 365 Business subscription—facilitating online meetings, chat, and collaborative file sharing all in one app—available on desktop or mobile.
Teams Phone is a cloud-based phone system built specifically to compliment Teams. With a Microsoft or operator calling plan, users make or accept calls from within Teams, to and from landlines and mobile phones on the PSTN. It also provides private branch exchange (PBX) capabilities and automated call controls.
New capabilities for Teams Phone
We are consistently bringing new features to Teams Phone, including three of notable mention.
- On May 1, we discussed how Microsoft 365 Copilot can help SMBs achieve more than ever before, and we’re excited to announce that Copilot is also coming to Teams Phone later this year to customers participating in the Microsoft 365 Copilot Early Access Program. Users will be able to create conversation summaries in real time, organize key discussion points, and summarize key actions during VoIP and PSTN calls—reducing the time spent on administrative tasks and free you to focus on the things most important to your business.
- We’re also pleased to announce shared calling which allows admins to easily enable groups of users to make and receive PSTN calls using a shared phone number and calling plan. For example, a single phone number can be shared by all store personnel at a small hardware to be able to make outbound calls to customers and receive incoming calls to the same number. Shared calling will be available this quarter, to help Teams Phone customers save on deployment time and effort.
- A new click-to-call feature will be available in public preview soon. Click-to-call makes it easy for customers to reach your sales and support teams directly from your web page or app. Developers can add, customize, and program the widget to connect customers to a specific Teams user, call queue, or auto attendant.
Learn more about Teams Phone and newly available features.
How to get started
For new customers, we are introducing special promotional offer that includes both Teams Essentials plus Teams Phone with a choice of calling plans.
For businesses that already have Teams Essentials or Microsoft 365 and are actively using Teams today, you can add Teams Phone with a choice of calling plans.
Get started with this limited time offer here or visit your preferred reseller. Terms and conditions apply.**
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“We are committed to ever improving the collaboration for hybrid teams and are excited to now give them world-class tools like Teams Essentials and Teams Phone in one easy to procure and easy to set up bundle. I'm incredibly proud of our continued innovation on Teams Phone in particular and we strive to delight our users every day. They depend on Teams Phone to run their business and interface with the world.” —Mahendra Sekaran, Vice President, Product Management |
* The future of B2B sales is hybrid | McKinsey
** The discount offer is available to new and existing customers who license a 12-month Microsoft Teams Essentials and Microsoft Teams Phone bundle (with or without a Microsoft Teams calling plan) through Direct and CSP direct channels between July 17, 2023, and July 1, 2024. This promotion is valid in the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom. This annual subscription automatically renews and is subject to recurring billing at the regular price and selected term. Customers can cancel at any time to stop future charges. Microsoft reserves the right to cancel, change, or suspend this offer at any time without notice.
