Name: Understanding Microsoft Teams Phone PSTN Choices and Costs
Start: 2023-11-28T16:00:00Z
End: 2023-11-28T16:00:48.000Z
Location: BrightTALK
Rating: 4.8

Metrigy is an innovative research and strategic advisory firm that analyzes enterprise success metrics to advise companies on their technology transformation strategies.

Founded by Robin Gareiss and Irwin Lazar, both renowned technology analysts and content developers, Metrigy focuses on some of the coolest and most interesting technologies:

Digital transformation and digital workplace,
Unified Communications & Collaboration (UCC),
Customer Experience (CX) and contact center,
Artificial intelligence and analytics.

Discover how today’s leading organizations are reimagining workforce engagement management (WEM) with the power of automation and AI. Nearly three out of four companies say WEM tools have boosted their agents’ experience, and AI is the driving force behind it. From automated quality management to freeing supervisors to focus on coaching and performance improvement, this technology is transforming how teams work. We’ll also explore why flexibility—through remote work, dynamic scheduling, and personalized engagement—is key to reducing attrition and enhancing satisfaction. Finally, see how WEM is moving beyond the contact center, with the majority of organizations agreeing it’s time to extend these benefits across the enterprise, unlocking new levels of efficiency and elevating customer experiences company-wide.

AI-Powered WEM: Driving Agent Experience, Flexibility, and Business Unit Expansion

An early pioneer with AI for communications platforms, Dialpad is now headed firmly into an agentic, fully autonomous future with a skills-based approach that will lead to a rich portfolio of granular service and support agents. What does this mean for the future of CX, including AI agents and their human counterparts? CEO Dialpad Craig Walker joins Metrigy's Beth Schultz to share his vision.

MetriSight Ep.88 - "CX as we know it is dead": Dialpad CEO Craig Walker Explains!

AI is revolutionizing the way employees engage with data and one another. And, agentic AI offers the possibility to transform work by automating activities and tasks. While these new advances offer potential to streamline and improve work, they also create potential security and privacy risks. Absent a proactive approach, companies may find themselves at a competitive disadvantage by not having the means to safely adopt AI and realize its potential benefits.

Successful companies must ensure that they have the right approach for identifying compliance requirements and security threats, classifying AI-generated data, and responding to issues as they arise. In this webinar, we’ll share Metrigy’s latest data on what successful companies are doing to meet ever-growing cybersecurity and compliance challenges. This webinar covers:
- How AI creates new security and compliance concerns and risks.
- Best practices for establishing a governance organization to safely enable AI adoption.
- How to identify, classify, and retain AI-generated content.
- Successful approaches for securing and managing compliance for AI

Best Practices for Ensuring Collaboration Compliance and Security in the Age of AI

Tune in to discover which vendors have earned our prestigious MetriStar Top Provider Award across two workplace collaboration technology categories, UCaaS and Meeting Devices, and which additional providers get the nod on earning high customer sentiment ratings and a high percentage of companies in the category success group--and share in our big round of applause to all winners!

MetriSight Ep.87 - The 2025 Workplace Collaboration MetriStar Award Winners

In this podcast episode, Robin Gareiss and Devon Mychal discuss the evolution and impact of AI in contact centers, focusing on Cresta's use of generative and agentic AI. They explore the definitions and distinctions between traditional AI and agentic AI, highlighting the proactive capabilities of agentic systems. The conversation delves into real-world applications, business value, and the future potential of AI in enhancing customer experience and operational efficiency.

MetriSight EP.86 - Agentic AI: Transforming Contact Centers with Cresta

As NiCE CMO Michelle Cooper reaches the 6-month mark in her role, Metrigy CEO Robin Gareiss discusses her lessons learned, how she will and will not change marketing strategy moving forward, and some of her biggest surprises.

MetriSight Ep.85 - Navigating Change: NiCE's Rebranding and AI Strategy

Consumers have strong definitive expectations on what merits a good experience with companies they do business with. Technology--increasingly AI, but also interaction channels and proactive outreach--plays an important role. Join Metrigy CEO Robin Gareiss to learn what you should (and should not) be doing to get the highest CSAT scores, and why consumer ages matter. She will address the following:
- What can you do that makes consumers spend more money with you--and where does technology play a role?
- In what circumstances do consumers think AI voice and text agents are appropriate?
- What channels are a must--and where do they really stand with voice vs. digital?
- Do consumers really want all those proactive emails, phone calls, and text messages? The answer may surprise you.

CX Expert Insights Series 3, Ep.1 - What Consumers Love and Hate About CX Technology

Companies overwhelmingly believe their customer experience (CX) initiatives are improving, yet consumer sentiment tells a different story. This presentation examines the perception gap between organizations and customers, drawing on new data from Metrigy’s AI for Business Success 2025–26. We explore how AI—when designed to assist rather than replace—can support agents, improve consistency, and strengthen trust through transparency and human oversight. With insights from Dialpad customers, we highlight strategies to reduce frustration, accelerate resolution times, and deliver the seamless experiences today’s consumers demand.

CX Expert Insight Series 3, Ep.3 - Bridging the CX Gap: Aligning Company Promise with Customer Reality

In Part 1, we uncovered what consumers value—and what frustrates them—about today’s service experiences. Now, it’s time to take action.In this fireside chat, Salesforce’s Oana Lungu Polanco joins Metrigy’s Robin Gareiss to explore how AI agents can be deployed more effectively to meet rising consumer expectations and what separates successful AI implementations from those that damage brand trust.You’ll also learn:
- Real-world case studies of organizations realizing value from their Agentforce, Service Cloud, and Digital Engagement investments
- How a deeply unified platform unlocks AI success, lowers total cost of ownership, and realizes faster ROI than costly DIY approaches
- Why data is critical to AI effectiveness and what your company can do now to prepare your data for the AI era
- How to align your AI agent strategy with your channel strategy

CX Expert Insights Series 3, Ep.2: AI Agents in Action: Closing the Gap Between CX Strategy and Consumer Expectations

Vinod Muthukrishnan, Cisco VP & COO, joins us to advise companies on how to get started, progress, and demonstrate compelling business improvements with AI in customer experience strategies.

MetriSight Ep.84 - AI: New Ways to Drive Results

Customer experience (CX) has entered a new reality. In today’s crowded, AI-saturated market, technology and features alone no longer differentiate vendors—everyone looks the same on the feature table. What matters is the experience as a whole.

In this Metrigy session, we’ll explore why the next wave of CX transformation isn’t about adding more features, but about creating seamless, reliable, and AI-centered experiences. We’ll cut through the noise of tech commoditization and AI hype to show how Voca CIC delivers a different kind of value:

- One vendor, one partner: AudioCodes isn’t just the builder of VOCA CIC—it delivers, implements, and manages it end-to-end.
- Microsoft Unify certified: Voca CIC meets the highest standards for uptime, onboarding, and AI alignment inside Microsoft Teams.
- Smarter AI, simpler design: A first look at Agent Insights, our AI-powered summarization built for real-world agent workflows.
- Commercial clarity: A straightforward three-tier model that makes buying and scaling Voca CIC simple.

If you’re navigating the “sea of sameness” in CX and looking for a way to stand out, this session will help you see what truly matters for your business and your customers.

WC Expert Insights Series 1, Ep.2: From AI Hype to Real CX Impact: How Voca CIC Stands Out

Metrigy recently gathered data from more than 200 organizations to uncover how they are using, or planning to use Microsoft Teams Phone for call queue management. In this session we'll share insights from this research and help business, IT, and customer service leaders understand successful strategies for:
- Determining where Teams Phone features are sufficient, and where they are not
- What analytics and management capabilities are required
- How to evaluate Microsoft Queues for advanced call management capabilities
- What drives companies to adopt fully-featured contact center platforms
- How to evaluate emerging options for Teams-contact center integration including the new Unified model
- What questions to ask providers to ensure success

WC Expert Insights Series 1 Ep.1: Microsoft Teams and the Contact Center: Insights from Metrigy's Research

In this episode, Metrigy's Diane Myers, senior research director, walks us through the just released 2025 CCaaS MetriRank, our third-annual ranking of top providers offering cloud contact center.

MetriSight Ep.83 - 2025 CCaaS MetriRank: Who's Top, Who's Not, and Why?

Tune in to discover which vendors have earned our prestigious MetriStar Top Provider Award across nine CX technology categories, and which additional providers get the nod on earning high customer sentiment ratings and a high percentage of companies in the category success group--and share in our big round of applause to all winners!

MetriSight Ep.82 - 2025 CX MetriStar Award Winners

Developing a solid CX strategy is significantly harder than it once was. When do AI agents trump human agents? In a digital-first world, does voice still matter? And how important is platform integration to unlock new levels of agility and insight?

Join Metrigy and Nextiva to get answers and insights to these crucial questions, and master building a sophisticated and flexible CX strategy that will drive business metrics. Hear from Metrigy CEO Robin Gareiss and Nextiva’s Senior Director, Porfolio Product Marketing & Customer Marketing Kate Hodgins, who will address the following:

- Gain practical insights into how AI helps—not replaces—agents
- Learn what consumers want (and don’t want) from technology when they interact with businesses—and find out some key generational differences
- Understand consumer channel selection and the importance of maintaining consistency across touchpoints
- Learn why voice remains the most crucial channel, and how to use AI strategically to elevate—not replace—voice interactions
- Take actionable insights on how to optimize your omnichannel strategy

Omnichannel 3.0: Mastering the Intersection of AI + Humans in a Digital-First World

AI only matters if it resolves something. And most enterprises are still falling short.
According to Metrigy’s latest research:
- Fewer than 50% of live interactions are resolved on first contact
- 91% of customers fail with self-service
- 75% of companies say agentic AI is critical to their future service model
- Companies using agentic AI see the highest gains across CSAT, revenue, and efficiency
In this fireside chat, TechSee’s Gavin Frank joins Metrigy CEO Robin Gareiss to show what visual agentic AI looks like in the wild — and why vision is the critical missing layer in most automation efforts.
You’ll learn how leading enterprises are:
- Automating complex service journeys through vision and context
- Boosting customer satisfaction by up to 35% with faster, clearer resolutions
- Generating clean, contextual data that strengthens knowledge bases
- Driving measurable results from day one — inside Salesforce and beyond

CX Expert Insights Series 2, Ep.3 - Scaling What Works: The Value of Visual Agentic AI

As agentic AI solutions evolve and develop capabilities to act on behalf of humans, opportunities for operational efficiency abound. CX leaders are keen to learn what aspects of currently available AI solutions are truly agentic, and can be leveraged today, and what opportunities are on the horizon. Join Elizabeth Tobey, VP of Marketing at NICE, as she discusses NICE’s current agentic AI solutions and the importance of taking a data-driven approach throughout the process of adopting agentic AI.

CX Expert Insights Series 2, Ep.2 - Implementing Informed Agentic AI: Current Capabilities and the Data that Powers Them

Metrigy recently conducted a study of Microsoft Teams Phone users to understand how they are connecting Teams Phone to the PSTN, and the costs of various options. In this informative webinar we'll share the benefits and limitations of Calling Plan, Direct Routing, and Operator Connect and share insights into the various costs associated with each option.

Understanding Microsoft Teams Phone PSTN Choices and Costs

Microsoft Teams

Calling

Direct Routing

Collaboration

Collaboration Tools

Collaborative Business

Unified communications improve collaboration and increase productivity among employees through technologies such as VoIP, instant messaging and social media. Join this community to learn how to benefit from the full value of unified communications and collaboration technologies.

Collaboration and UC

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Information Technology

Get powerful insights on how to best serve today's customers. If you want to create a successful customer experience today, you will have to appeal to the need for “alone together” time. Millennials, Gen X, Boomers or Silent Generation all look for shared but individual experiences.

Customer Experience

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CxO Strategy

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Understanding Microsoft Teams Phone PSTN Choices and Costs

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Metrigy