As a small business, offering exceptional customer service is essential to retaining your customers and attracting new prospects. Microsoft Teams introduces a new live chat feature, available in all Microsoft 365 Business plans (Business Basic, Business Standard and Business Premium), which could transform the way you interact with your customers online.
What is Microsoft Teams Live Chat?
Live chat is a new feature integrated into Microsoft Teams that allows your website visitors to communicate directly with your team via Teams. Here are some of the key features:
- Customer Chat integration: Visitors to your website can start a conversation directly on the site, and your team can respond via Teams.
- Visitor Information Collection: Collect visitor contact information for further follow-up.
- Automatic assignment: Connect visitors to an available Teams user.
- Conversation management: reassign or close conversations directly from Teams.
- Transcripts and Requests: Publish customer requests and associated transcripts in a Teams channel.
- Dashboard: Track all customer requests over a given period.




Why use Live Chat?
- Improved customer engagement: Offer your customers a quick and easy way to contact you with questions or problems.
- Operational efficiency: Manage all customer interactions from a single platform, simplifying the process for your team.
- Monitoring and analysis: Use the dashboard to analyze customer requests and continually improve your service.
How do I activate Live Chat?
Live chat will be disabled by default. Global administrators and Teams administrators will be able to configure this feature via the Teams administration portal available in the Teams App Store. Once enabled, your team will be able to start using this feature to enhance the customer experience.
Availability
- United States: Deployment scheduled from mid-January to the end of January 2025.
- Rest of the world: Deployment scheduled from early March to late March 2025.
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Conclusion
Microsoft Teams live chat is a powerful, easy-to-implement solution for small businesses looking to improve their customer service. By integrating this functionality, you can deliver a more responsive and personalized customer experience, while simplifying interaction management for your team.