Do we have to change our phone numbers or move off Microsoft Teams?

No. You keep Teams Phone, you keep your numbers, and you keep your carrier. Your staff keep answering calls in the Teams client or on their Teams handset exactly as they do now. What changes is what happens before the call reaches them, and what happens to the calls that never reach anybody. In many rollouts the first change we make is limited to the after hours branch of the auto attendant and the overflow and timeout destinations on one call queue, which is fully reversible in the Teams admin centre in a couple of minutes.

Where exactly does the AI sit in a Teams call flow?

There are three usual places. In front of everything, where the published number answers with the AI and it transfers into Teams for anything that needs a person. On the safety net paths, where your auto attendant and call queues stay as they are and the AI becomes the overflow, timeout, no agents available and after hours destination. Or by number, where a Direct Routing setup lets specific numbers or patterns be routed to the AI before they reach your tenant at all. Most Australian businesses start on the safety net paths, prove it for a few weeks, then decide whether to move it to the front.

Can it actually transfer a live caller to somebody in Teams?

Yes. It transfers to the direct dial of a Teams user, to a call queue, or to the number on the resource account sitting in front of an auto attendant branch, and it can just as easily transfer to an external mobile for an on call roster. Before it transfers, it can check whether that person is available, busy, in a meeting or on do not disturb, and choose a different path if the transfer would only land in voicemail. We agree the escalation order with you and test every target from a real handset before go live.

Does this replace our Teams auto attendant and call queues?

No, and we would usually argue against replacing them. Your auto attendant and call queues carry your business hours, your holiday sets, your agent lists and your routing methods, and they are a perfectly good fallback. We put a conversational layer in front of them, or on the destinations they already have, and leave the underlying configuration in place. If the AI is ever unreachable, the call falls back to the auto attendant you have today. That fallback is one of the paths we test explicitly before you go live.

What Microsoft licensing do we need for this to work?

You need Teams Phone for the staff who make and take calls, plus a way to get calling minutes, which is a Microsoft Calling Plan, an Operator Connect carrier, Teams Phone Mobile, or your own Direct Routing. Each auto attendant and each call queue also needs a resource account with the appropriate resource account licence, and a number assigned to it if callers are to reach it directly. Plenty of businesses discover during discovery that they are missing a resource account licence or that a number was never assigned. We check all of that before we quote, and we tell you what it will cost to fix.

Does it matter whether we use Direct Routing, Operator Connect or Calling Plans?

It matters for how we implement it, not for whether it can be done. Direct Routing gives you the most control, because your session border controller can route a number or a pattern to the AI before the call reaches your tenant, and reverse it just as quickly. With Calling Plans or Operator Connect, the number is provisioned by Microsoft or by your carrier, so we work through the Teams auto attendant and call queue redirect targets, or place a new number in front of the published one. We identify which situation you are in during the first conversation, because it changes the plan and the cost of the extra call leg.

Is our call data safe, and what about recording under the Privacy Act?

Call recordings, transcripts and summaries are personal information under the Privacy Act, and recording a private conversation is also governed by state and territory surveillance devices legislation, which differs around the country. So callers are told in plain words at the start, before anything is captured. We agree with you what is retained, for how long, and where it is kept, and we keep retention short by default. Access into your Microsoft 365 tenant is least privilege and only the data that has to move actually moves. If you have a regulatory obligation to record, keep that on Teams compliance recording and let the AI sit in front of it.

What does it cost, and how long does it take?

Scoping engagements start at $1,000 for a focused BASIC piece, $3,000 for a STANDARD engagement, and $10,000 for a STRATEGIC one across a larger estate. Voice agents themselves start from a $990 setup, then $299 per month for 500 minutes, $599 per month for 1,500 minutes, or a custom plan at enterprise volumes. All figures are in Australian dollars. Most Teams Phone front doors go live in two to six weeks depending on how many auto attendants and queues are in scope and how much of your own data the AI needs to read. You get a fixed scope, timeframe and price after discovery, before any build begins.

For Australian businesses running their phones inside Microsoft Teams

AI Receptionist in Front of Microsoft Teams Phone

Your phone system moved into Microsoft Teams, so calls now land in the same app your staff use for meetings, chat and focus time. That is exactly the problem. A customer rings the main number, the Teams auto attendant reads out a menu, the call queue rings four people who are all presenting, and the enquiry finishes in cloud voicemail that nobody plays until Thursday. Yes AI puts a conversational receptionist in front of that flow so the call is answered on the first ring, understood in plain English, and either transferred to the right person in Teams or handled properly and written up.

We sit in front of your auto attendant, or take the overflow, timeout and after hours destinations on your call queues, then transfer live callers into a Teams user, a call queue or a resource account. The outcome lands where your team already works: a Teams channel, an Outlook booking, a SharePoint list, or your CRM. Designed for Australian businesses, Australian accents, and the Privacy Act.

Book a Free Call Flow Review (03) 9003 0111

Realistic ROI

Hours/week

Reception time returned

The calls that only needed an address, an opening time or a job status stop interrupting the people who are billing

Fewer missed calls

Overflow and after hours covered

The queue timeout and no agents available paths stop dead ending in a voicemail box nobody plays

Every call logged

Outcome in Teams, Outlook or your CRM

Who rang, what they wanted and what still has to happen, posted where the follow up actually gets done

2 to 6 weeks

From scope to live

Most Teams Phone front doors go live inside a fixed, agreed timeframe once the call flows and transfer targets are mapped

Why Put Yes AI in Front of Microsoft Teams Phone

Microsoft Teams Phone is a capable phone system and we are not here to replace it. The gap is at the front door. The Teams auto attendant is a menu: it reads out options, matches a spoken option name, searches your directory by name, and redirects to a person, a queue, an external number or voicemail. It cannot ask a caller what they actually need, judge whether it is urgent, book them in, or write up what was said. Four things make Yes AI the right people to close that gap without pulling your tenant apart.

We map your real call flows before we touch anything

Before a word of the greeting is written we go through what your tenant actually does: every auto attendant with its business hours, after hours and holiday call flows, every call queue with its routing method, overflow threshold, timeout threshold and no agents available destination, and every resource account that has a number attached. It is common for that audit to surface something nobody knew was still live, a forgotten second auto attendant or a queue still pointing at somebody who left. That map, not a template, is the brief we build against.

We work with the way your numbers were actually delivered

Whether your numbers come from Microsoft Calling Plans, an Operator Connect carrier, Teams Phone Mobile or your own Direct Routing session border controller changes what is possible, how fast it can be reversed, and what it costs. Direct Routing gives the most room, because a number or a pattern can be pointed at the AI before the call ever reaches your tenant. With Calling Plans or Operator Connect we work inside Teams, using auto attendant and call queue redirect targets, and where it makes sense a new number in front of the published one. We tell you which path applies to you on the first call, not after the invoice.

Australian, and straight about privacy

We are an Australian consultancy and we design every call flow with the Privacy Act and the Australian Privacy Principles in mind, because a phone call becomes personal information the moment somebody gives their name and their problem. Recording and monitoring also sit under state and territory surveillance devices legislation, which is not uniform across the country, so the caller is told what is happening before anything is captured. Access into your Microsoft 365 tenant is least privilege, connections are encrypted, and you get a written record of what is captured, where it is kept and for how long.

One team, from scope to the week after go live

The same people scope the call flows, write the conversation, build the integration into Microsoft 365, test it against your own numbers and support it once it is live. You are not handed between a strategist, an offshore developer who has never seen a Teams resource account, and a ticket queue. When you open another site, change your trading hours, or your IT provider moves you from Calling Plans to Operator Connect, the people who built it are the people who adjust it.

What We Build Around Microsoft Teams Phone

Six capabilities that sit either in front of your Teams tenant or on destinations your call queues already have. None of this asks you to rip out Teams Phone, retrain staff on a new handset, or move your numbers to another carrier. It changes what happens in the twenty seconds before a call reaches a human, and what happens to the calls that never reach one.

No key presses

A conversational front door instead of a menu

The published number answers on the first ring and asks an open question rather than reading nine options. Callers say what they want in their own words, including the things your auto attendant has no key for: chasing a quote, checking whether a part arrived, asking whether you cover Ballarat. The AI recognises the intent and either handles it or routes it, and nobody hears press one for sales, press two for accounts.

Queue safety net

Overflow, timeout and after hours on your call queues

You keep your Teams call queues exactly as they are and we become the destination on the paths that currently dead end: overflow once the queue hits its maximum, timeout once a caller has waited past your threshold, no agents available when everyone has opted out or logged off, and the after hours branch of the auto attendant. This is the least invasive way to start, it changes nothing about how your staff work, and it is where most of the lost revenue is hiding.

Live handover

Live transfer into a Teams user, queue or resource account

When a caller needs a person, the AI transfers them to the direct dial of a Teams user, to a call queue, or to the number on the resource account in front of an auto attendant branch. We agree every transfer target with you and then test each one from a real handset and a real mobile, because a target that is correct in a spreadsheet and wrong in the tenant is the single most common reason a caller hears dead air.

No dead ends

Routing that respects who is genuinely available

Teams already knows whether somebody is available, busy, in a meeting or on do not disturb, and we read that before handing a caller over. If the one person who can answer is presenting, the AI says so, offers a callback at a time that suits, or moves to the next name on the escalation list. What it does not do is push the caller into the same voicemail box that made you go looking for a better front door.

Teams and Outlook

The outcome lands where the work already happens

Every call produces a written summary: who rang, the number they rang from, what they wanted, what was answered, and what a human still has to do. That is posted into the right Teams channel as a card people can act on, sent to a shared Outlook mailbox, written as a row in a SharePoint list your team can filter and report on, or created as a lead or case in Dynamics 365, HubSpot or Salesforce. There is no separate portal your staff have to remember to open.

Work completed

The jobs the auto attendant simply cannot do

Booking an appointment against real Outlook free and busy time, answering the twenty questions your team repeats every day, taking a message with the details actually filled in, qualifying an enquiry before it reaches a salesperson, and offering a callback instead of a hold queue. Where your queue has no callback option configured, a caller who will not wait simply hangs up and rings the next business on the list, and you never find out what they wanted. A callback offer with the enquiry already written down is usually the first thing we switch on.

Six Microsoft Teams Phone Situations We Fix

Task	Traditional	With Yes AI in Front of Teams	Notes
Professional services firm where every fee earner is in back to back Teams meetings	Menu, then a queue that rings people who are presenting, then cloud voicemail	Answered on the first ring, urgent matters transferred, the rest summarised into Teams	Presence is checked before any transfer, so a caller is never pushed at somebody whose status says do not disturb.
Trade or field services business with crews on the road and one office phone	The after hours branch reads a message and drops the caller into voicemail until Monday	After hours calls answered, triaged for urgency, then escalated or booked by rule	A genuine emergency goes straight to the on call mobile. A quote request becomes a job in the morning queue with the details already captured.
Clinic or allied health practice using Teams Phone on the front desk	Reception juggles the counter and the phone, callers hold, some hang up and ring the next practice	Overflow answered instantly, appointments booked against real Outlook availability	Nothing clinical is answered. Anything a receptionist would escalate is escalated, and the recording notice runs before anything is captured.
Wholesaler whose team fields the same order status question all day	Every one of those calls interrupts somebody on the sales desk or in the warehouse	Routine order, delivery and stock questions answered from your own systems, exceptions transferred	The AI reads only what you allow it to read, and hands the call over the moment somebody asks for something it cannot verify.
Multi site business with one auto attendant and a menu that keeps growing	Nine options, nested submenus, and callers pressing zero to reach any human at all	One conversational front door that works out the site and the department from the question	Your auto attendant stays configured behind it as the fallback, so nothing breaks if we ever need to step back for a day.
Business that cannot tell how many calls it is actually losing	Teams call analytics shows queue wait times, but abandoned and after hours calls say nothing about intent	Every call answered and categorised, with a weekly view of what people actually rang about	The weekly view groups calls by what was actually asked, so a single repeated question driving your volume shows up as a line you can act on rather than a hunch.

Six Teams Phone Realities We Are Straight About

Licences and resource accounts are a real prerequisite

Teams Phone is not included simply because you have Microsoft 365. Staff who make and take calls need a Teams Phone licence, and you need calling minutes on top of that through a Microsoft Calling Plan, an Operator Connect carrier or your own Direct Routing. Every auto attendant and every call queue is bound to a resource account, each of which needs its own resource account licence, and a number assigned to it if callers are to reach it directly. Changes in the Teams admin centre need a tenant administrator, so your IT provider or internal admin has to be part of this project rather than told about it afterwards. We tell you what is missing before we quote.

What is possible depends on how your numbers were delivered

With Direct Routing you control the session border controller, so a number or a number pattern can be pointed at the AI before it touches your tenant and switched back within minutes. With Microsoft Calling Plans or Operator Connect the number belongs to Microsoft or to your carrier, so we work inside Teams using auto attendant and call queue redirect targets, or we place a new number in front and forward the published one to it. Both approaches work. They differ in how quickly you can change your mind, and in what your carrier charges for the extra call leg. We size that up on day one so there is no surprise in week three.

A transferred call changes what your staff and your reports see

When the AI answers first and then transfers, your staff will in many carrier configurations see the call arriving from the AI service rather than from the original caller, because passing the original calling line identity across a transfer is not guaranteed on Australian networks. We deal with that by putting the caller number and a one line summary in front of the person before they pick up, as a Teams message or a screen pop. The same applies to reporting: Teams call analytics measures the leg it can see, so the AI log becomes the source of truth for answer rate and abandonment. We make sure that log is something you can actually read and report on.

Presence, do not disturb and the voicemail dead end

Teams presence is useful but it is not truth. Somebody can be marked available and be driving, or marked in a meeting and perfectly happy to take a call from a key client. If we transfer to a Teams user who is on do not disturb, Teams will do exactly what it is configured to do and send that caller to cloud voicemail, which is the outcome you engaged us to prevent. So we build the escalation list explicitly: who first, who second, how many rings before we move on, and the point at which the AI stops trying and takes the message itself. That list is a business decision, and it is yours.

Recording, consent and privacy

Call recordings and transcripts are personal information under the Privacy Act, and recording a private conversation is separately governed by state and territory surveillance devices legislation, which is not uniform across Australia. This page is general information rather than legal advice, so confirm your own obligations with your adviser. Callers are told in plain words at the start, before anything is captured. We agree what is retained, for how long, and where it is stored, and we keep retention short by default. Worth knowing too: Teams compliance recording for regulated industries is a distinct, certified capability inside Teams with its own policy controls, and a front door AI is not a substitute for it. If you are obliged to record under a regulator, keep that in Teams and let the AI sit in front.

What we will not let the AI own

It never handles an emergency. Anything that sounds urgent, medical or safety related is transferred to a human or an on call mobile immediately, there is an escape phrase a caller can use at any point to reach a person, and the AI is never in the path of an outbound emergency call from a Teams handset. It does not give clinical, legal or financial advice. It does not commit to a price, a lead time or a warranty outcome. It does not pretend to be a person, and if a caller asks, it says what it is. When it is unsure it hands over or takes a message, which is the safest wrong answer available to it.

How Yes AI Helps

Call flow discovery

We document what your tenant does with an inbound call today: every auto attendant and holiday set, every call queue with its thresholds and overflow destinations, every resource account and assigned number, and the point at which callers currently give up. You keep that map whether or not you go ahead with a build.

Build and integration

We write the conversation for your business, build the front door, wire every transfer to the right Teams target, and connect the outcome into Teams channels, Outlook, SharePoint and your CRM. One accountable team, one fixed scope, and a script you approve before anything is built.

Secure, compliant delivery

Least privilege access into your Microsoft 365 tenant, encrypted connections, a recording notice callers genuinely hear, deliberate retention periods, and a written record of what is captured and where it goes. Delivered by an Australian consultancy that understands Australian privacy expectations.

Monitoring and tuning after go live

We listen to real calls in the first weeks, correct the intents it gets wrong, tighten the transfer and escalation rules, and report on what your callers keep asking for. Call flows change when the business changes, and the people who built it are the people who adjust it.

Our Teams Phone Rollout

A clear five step path from a first conversation to a live, monitored front door on your Microsoft Teams Phone numbers. Most Australian businesses are live inside two to six weeks, depending on how many auto attendants and call queues are in scope and how much of your own data the AI needs to read.

Discovery and call flow audit

We go through your existing Teams voice configuration with your administrator: auto attendants, business hours and holiday call flows, call queues with their routing methods and thresholds, resource accounts, assigned numbers, and how those numbers were delivered. Then we listen to what callers actually ask for, and agree which of those the AI should own, which it should route, and which it must never touch.

Design and scripting

We design the conversation and the routing tree: the greeting, the questions it asks, the recording notice, the escalation list, the transfer target for every outcome, and the exact wording for handing over and for taking a message. You approve the script, the scope and the timeframe before a single change is made in your tenant.

Build and integrate

We build the front door, configure the transfer targets, and connect the outcomes into Microsoft 365 and your CRM: the Teams channel card, the Outlook booking against real free and busy time, the SharePoint list row, the record in Dynamics 365, HubSpot or Salesforce. Nothing changes in your production tenant without your administrator in the room.

Test on your own numbers

We test every path from real handsets and real mobiles: each transfer target, the queue overflow and timeout branches, after hours, holidays, and the failure case where the AI is unreachable and the call must fall straight back to your existing auto attendant. You listen to those calls yourself before a single customer hears it.

Go live and tune

We cut over on the numbers you choose, very often starting with after hours and overflow only, then widen once you trust it. We watch the first weeks closely, tune the intents and the escalation rules against real calls, and report back on volume, outcomes, and the questions your callers keep repeating.

FAQ

Stop Losing Calls Inside Microsoft Teams

Book a free call and we will map what your Teams tenant does with an inbound call today: every auto attendant, every queue threshold, and every point where a caller currently dead ends. You keep that map either way, along with a straight answer on what we would put in front first.