Inside Track Blog
Daniel Bauer and Ian McDonnell helped coordinate the massive effort to unify Microsoft’s customer call center system. (Photo by Aleenah Ansari | Inside Track)
Overhauling the call management system Microsoft used to make 70 million calls per year has been a massive undertaking.
The highly complex system was 20 years old and difficult to move on from when, five years ago, the company decided a transformation was needed.
These phone calls are how Microsoft talks to its customers and its partners. We needed to get this right because our call management system is one of the company’s biggest front doors.
IT Showcase Blog
Engineering teams in Microsoft Core Services Engineering and Operations have worked to ensure the entire company was ready to work from home. (Photo by Aleenah Ansari | Showcase)
When it became clear that employees would need to shift to working from home because of COVID-19, Microsoft pivoted quickly, taking steps to make sure the transition would be smooth for its 166,000 employees.
The team leading the charge was Microsoft Core Services Engineering and Operations (CSEO), the engineering organization at Microsoft that builds and manages the products, processes, and services that the company runs on.
The work that CSEO engineering teams did to make sure the company was ready for working from home included optimizing its network and VPN, ensuring its Zero Trust security system was ready for prime time, and making sure Microsoft Teams and other productivity tools were ready to help employees work from home with ease.