Businesses today need communications solutions that are both flexible and reliable to support hybrid work while maintaining strong customer relationships. Intermedia Intelligent Communications – the cloud communications provider serving more than 150,000 businesses and over 7,500 partners worldwide – delivers on this need by unifying voice, video, chat, contact centre, archiving and AI capabilities within a single, secure experience. Yet many organisations still struggle to create differentiated experiences for employees and customers on one connected platform. Unified communications (UC) and contact centre (CC) solutions are helping bridge that gap by combining advanced telephony, messaging and collaboration tools that support both internal teamwork and customer-facing operations.
IDC’s Worldwide Unified Communications and Collaboration Forecast report projects the UC and CC market will reach $85 billion by 2028. Customer experience analysts at Metrigy note more than two-thirds (69 per cent) of companies value the integration of UC and CC. Benefits range from being able to pull experts into live customer interactions to consolidating analytics for a clearer, unified view of performance. Intermedia Intelligent Communications has built its reputation on delivering these outcomes, bringing UC and CC together for organisations of all sizes.
“Many organisations are still juggling separate systems for communication and customer engagement, which makes it difficult to deliver a consistent, high-quality experience,” says Jonathan McCormick, chief operations officer and chief revenue officer at Intermedia Intelligent Communications. “Our Intelligent Communications platform brings voice, video, chat, contact centre, archiving and AI into a single, secure experience so businesses can unify those workflows and create smoother, more differentiated interactions for both employees and customers.”
Intermedia Intelligent Communications’ platform enables employees to move naturally between calls, chats and meetings, while giving managers clearer visibility into activity and outcomes. For organisations, it reduces the overhead of coordinating multiple providers and creates a more consistent, productive environment for employees and the customers they serve.
This integrated approach also helps the company’s partners deliver more personalised and dependable service.
“Through automation, training, onboarding and migration support, customisable marketing resources, a single intuitive management portal and more, we make it easier for partners to deliver a consistent, high-quality service that helps drive long-term customer retention,” says McCormick. “When everything operates within one platform, organisations spend less time coordinating tools and more time focusing on the work that improves customer experience and team performance.”
IDC’s research also highlights AI as a major driver of UC and CC adoption. AI-enabled collaboration and telephony tools are improving productivity and enhancing both employee and customer outcomes.
“Across our platform, capabilities like Agent Assist, Supervisor Assist, Intent Routing and real-time summarisation surface insights, guide interactions and capture details automatically so employees can focus on the conversation rather than the mechanics behind it,” says McCormick. “Partners and customers can benefit from them without adopting new workflows or tools.”
A key element of providing this experience is Intermedia’s integration with Microsoft Teams. While the platform operates as a fully standalone communications solution, it also extends seamlessly into Teams for organisations that want to consolidate communications inside their existing collaboration environment. As a Microsoft Certified Solutions Partner for more than 15 years, the company has focused on deep, native interoperability, embedding its UC and CC capabilities directly within Teams rather than offering a parallel application or overlay. This allows users to make and receive calls, host video meetings and access historical communications data inside the workspace they already rely on.
Intermedia Intelligent Communications’ approach also removes some of the licensing complexity organisations often face when enabling calling capabilities in Teams. Because its voice services are embedded directly within the Teams interface, users can make and receive calls without requiring an additional Teams Phone license, while still benefiting from enterprise-grade reliability and management.
“Teams is a powerful collaboration hub, and we expand what it can do by integrating enterprise-grade calling – including more than 100 professional phone features – along with SMS, contact centre and archiving directly into the Teams interface,” says McCormick. “Intermedia has delivered the first fully embedded UC and CC solution for Teams, giving users the ability to place and receive calls, manage customer interactions and access historical communications data without leaving where they already work.”
Intermedia Intelligent Communications also unifies data across its own and Microsoft environments, simplifying compliance and enabling deeper insight discovery. This creates a more complete, secure and connected Teams experience. A law firm, for example, can automatically capture, archive and search call recordings from both Teams and Intermedia in one place, helping compliance teams verify disclosures quickly. A distributed sales team can analyse performance using call volumes, meeting transcripts and follow-up emails together, giving managers a clearer understanding of customer needs and sentiment.
As new pressures emerge across collaboration and customer engagement, McCormick outlines how Intermedia Intelligent Communications is positioning its platform to support customers and partners.
“Two key trends are shaping what’s next: the convergence of internal collaboration and customer engagement, and the rising impact of AI across every interaction,” he says. “Businesses want a unified platform that aligns their internal teams and customer-facing operations, supported by intelligence that turns communication into real-time insight and better decision-making.
“Intermedia is built for that future. By bringing capabilities from unified-communications-as-a-service, contact-centre-as-a-service, AI and archiving natively into Teams, we give partners and customers a secure, scalable platform that adapts to evolving work practices. We help partners stay ahead of change, deliver more value and grow with confidence.”
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