Press release

Disrupting the Norm: Clerk Chat’s Integration Redefines SMS and Calling with Microsoft Teams and Operator Connect

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Sponsored by Businesswire

There’s a shift in the way Microsoft Teams users communicate, and Clerk Chat, a leading conversational messaging platform, is at the forefront of this technological advancement. Clerk Chat enables native integration into Microsoft Teams for SMS text messaging and WhatsApp.

Microsoft Teams, with over 271 millions users, serves as both a leading collaboration platform and a unified communications powerhouse. Embraced by more than 15 million companies daily, it excels as a UCaaS platform, particularly for remote work, functioning as a virtual workspace. The platform offers robust calling and productivity features, including chat, audio/video calls, virtual meetings, and real-time document sharing.

However, one area where Microsoft Teams falls short is not providing a native SMS texting solution, and when many companies transition from Zoom Phone, RingCentral, 8×8, Dialpad and other VoIP providers, they find themselves hand-tied when they cannot text.

And now, with Clerk Chat’s ability to natively integrate with Teams, users can finally make both calls and send SMS to people outside of their organization, whether it be clients or customers, using their existing business phone number. There is no more need to choose multiple providers for texting and calling – Clerk Chat, through its Operator Connect partnership with Tier1 telecom providers, is able to provide seamless communication services. Clerk Chat’s solution is powered by Bandwidth, the main carrier for Microsoft Teams calling, which allows you to avoid lengthy and messy porting processes. In fact, customers can bring their existing Teams phone numbers with absolutely no disruption to calling.

Bringing messaging to Microsoft’s calling customers allows businesses to tap into the most popular channels of communication: SMS and WhatsApp. Companies can confirm appointments, schedule automated messages, and dominate voice or text-based customer service – all while ensuring compliance¹ due to Clerk Chat’s SOC2 Type2 certification.

From an outside perspective, Clerk Chat appears to be effortlessly building the future of communication. “We enable a multi-channel approach that allows businesses to speak to their customers via their channels of preference,” said Igor Boshoer, Chief Technical Officer and Co-Founder of Clerk Chat. “The telecommunication component, integrating within Operator Connect, is really the backbone of powering those channels in a really elegant way for those businesses – we’re able to meet the most rigorous compliance standards by encrypting the messages as well.”

Integrating Clerk Chat into Microsoft Teams for SMS and voice streamlines communication, saving time and eliminates channel-switching. And, with Operator Connect, which revolutionizes connectivity, businesses simplify PSTN integration directly in Teams, gaining access to Clerk Chat’s technical expertise, secure products and services, and its reliable infrastructure – all while still receiving capabilities of Microsoft’s software support.

“We’re really trying to be at the forefront of defining a secure digital landscape as a company,” said Will Chertoff, Vice President of Engineering and Co-Founder of Clerk Chat. “It’s integral for businesses to feel confident and be able to trust their sensitive data with a reputable messaging provider.”

For more information about Clerk Chat’s seamless integration with Microsoft Teams, please visit https://clerk.chat/teams/.

¹ https://clerk.chat/blog/fedramp-government-sms/