The modern contact center is increasingly seen as a fragmented ecosystem, combining various technologies such as CRM platforms, AI bots, and workforce management tools. This disconnection complicates even basic customer interactions, requiring data to traverse multiple systems. As Gidi Adlersberg, VP of Product at AudioCodes’ Voca Conversational Interaction Center (CIC), explained, this ongoing fragmentation exacerbates challenges in customer experience (CX) and IT management.
Enterprises often operate between 10 to 20 different CRM platforms, each generating its own data silo. The rise of AI compounds this issue, as organizations deploy separate bots for diverse functions like HR benefits, sales, and campaigns. Consequently, the focus for CX and IT leaders should shift from whether to consolidate to how to do so effectively.
Azure and Teams: The Foundation for True UC-CX Consolidation
Microsoft’s ecosystem, particularly Azure, serves as a critical foundation for unifying various communication and customer experience tools. “To consolidate, you need to look for the best common denominator, and in this case, it’s Azure,” Adlersberg noted. With Teams commanding nearly 50 percent of the UCaaS market and Azure ranking among the top three cloud providers globally, this integration offers a promising solution for connecting frontline agents with back-office expertise without the need for extensive contact center licenses.
AudioCodes’ Voca CIC exemplifies this strategy by utilizing Teams Phone extensibility and Azure Communication Services to create a unified platform. This integration combines Microsoft Teams, contact center capabilities, and AI into a single data pool, thereby enhancing both customer and employee experiences.
Despite the clear advantages presented by such consolidation, many organizations struggle to implement these strategies effectively. Organizational inertia, rather than technological limitations, often poses the primary barrier. “The biggest enemy of change is just day-to-day life and reality,” Adlersberg shared, emphasizing how enterprises frequently favor immediate concerns over long-term solutions.
This scenario leads to what Adlersberg describes as the “spring cleaning” problem, where companies layer multiple solutions onto existing systems, resulting in increasingly complex ecosystems that hinder integration. The rapid advancement of AI has also outpaced many organizations’ capabilities to hire and train staff, leaving technical teams feeling obsolete as new AI solutions demand entirely different operational frameworks.
This shift in dynamics has altered vendor sales approaches, increasingly targeting C-level executives who are now prioritizing business outcomes over technical specifications. When senior leadership acknowledges the critical need for AI-enhanced CX, many technical objections lose their weight.
The Next Two Years: From Experimentation to Essential Infrastructure
The role of AI in contact centers is transitioning from a novel concept to a vital operational component. However, the transition is not without its challenges. According to the Cavell Group’s Q3 2025 Agent Experience Report, 40 percent of agents indicate that AI has increased their workloads, rather than alleviating them. Many rushed implementations, driven by the hype surrounding AI, have introduced more complexity rather than resolving existing issues.
“You have a lot of AI solutions today that, instead of making life easier for the agent, actually make it more complex,” Adlersberg remarked. The next 18 to 24 months will likely differentiate genuine AI capabilities that yield meaningful business outcomes from those that merely repackage existing features. Two technologies set to become essential include AI-powered conversation summarization and advanced voice agents, such as AI receptionists. Adlersberg predicts that “within one to two years, things like AI summaries will become obvious,” asserting that AI summary capabilities will become indispensable for contact centers.
AudioCodes has integrated these functionalities into Voca CIC via its Agent Insights feature, which offers AI-generated call summaries along with compliance recording and sentiment analysis. Customer interactions will likely undergo significant transformations, rendering outdated technologies like touch-tone IVR systems nearly extinct.
For businesses ready to overcome fragmentation, AudioCodes advocates a pragmatic, testing-driven approach to modernizing AI and CX solutions. Adlersberg notes that in 90 percent of their discovery calls, potential customers come already informed about AudioCodes’ offerings. His advice emphasizes the importance of engaging actual users during the testing phase to assess the true impact of AI on customer-facing operations.
Organizations should remain open to expanding their use cases beyond initial trials, as greater familiarity with the technology may reveal additional opportunities for integration. “You might realize, ‘Wait, I can take this here and there and there,’” Adlersberg explained.
In summary, the journey from fragmented CX to a cohesive, AI-enhanced customer experience is increasingly reliant on solutions like Microsoft Teams and Azure. Given the existing technology and proven implementations, the business rationale for consolidation is stronger than ever. What remains to be seen is the organization’s commitment to prioritizing long-term architecture over immediate, short-term fixes.
For CX and IT leaders ready to explore consolidation, visit here to learn more about Voca CIC’s Microsoft Teams integration and AI capabilities, or request a demo to test the platform with your actual use cases.
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