Why Microsoft Teams is Difficult to Adopt
Disclaimer: Microsoft Teams has done nothing to deserve this review. Except create a product that ties all their other enterprise product lines together which always piques my interest.
There’s a video!?
That’s right folks. If video’s your jam, you’re welcome.
(Reader: “But Elizabeth, I’m on Medium because I like reading…”)
Why Microsoft?
Microsoft Teams is a communication and collaboration product that combines workplace chat, video meetings, file storage and application integration… Aka all of Microsoft’s established products.
Usage of Microsoft Teams has grown steadily in the past few years against Slack. So let’s meet the one-size-fits-all solution that so neatly ties all Microsoft products together, Microsoft Teams!
Landing Page
Woah. Tiny text.
Scrolling down, they’ve squeezed a LOT of text and images into the homepage. Definitely could use some whitespace, but leggo.
FEATURES
Online Meetings
I like that they emphasized the before, during and after meeting which made Microsoft Teams more cohesive with its features. Features includes creating schedule for a meeting, creating channels, chats during meeting, taking notes and file sharing, which I believe are very helpful to make users very efficient with their work’s productivity. After the meeting, you can also easily send the minutes of the meetings to every person who was in the meeting and that’s where I really understood the Microsoft’s ecosystem.
PRICING
Next, I get on to the pricing and the pricing gives me a little bit of confusion. There are arrows that I do not know exactly the difference between the black border vs. the completely black arrow? That doesn’t really resonate with me. And so I find this like tiny little text of a small on the small side that size, the black bordered arrow is the one where you have partial use.
Personally, it was difficult and confusing for initial users since I do not know what I am getting into but good thing it is free so people would most likely try it out and I did. As I go further on the page, I saw a pop where there is an option to talk to a Microsoft Team specialist and I think it was great and helpful. They just come right on time!
However, the down side is they want me to download a Chrome Extension which I thought it did not mix with the rest of the vibe of the place. So I used Web App instead of downloading it because I think they did not earn the right yet for me to download it.
FIRST TIME USER EXPERIENCE (FTUX)
Now, let’s talk about the first time user experience and let’s look at the one minute magic moment. I thought the onboarding was fine. They asked me a couple of questions and I immediately got onto the platform. There were five icons from all of the settings and in additional download button were on the bottom and it was kind of blank, which of the platform.
Well, I can see that the only way that I’m going to get value from the site is if I invite others. I need to collaborate with the people that I’m on this chat. So I invite my team. I was able to set up a calendar invite.
HELP PAGE
Then I ended up on the Help Page …
Help Page had all of these tutorials, all these demo videos of ways that I could learn how to use Microsoft Teams, and I thought it was great. I was super impressed with the add-ons.
Now, the hardest metric of all… the Grit Score. How gritty do I get the prospective customer need to be to get to a beautiful, magical success moment?
I have these beautiful, magical success moments in my mind but I wasn’t able to achieve it in 30 to 45 minutes that I actually was on the platform. I am giving Microsoft Teams video feature a grit score of seven. The switching cost is very high and I need a higher grit score to get everybody adopt the platform at the same time. Overall, I think Microsoft Teams is actually quite an interesting product. I think this is the most cohesive Microsoft product I have encountered. I am not sure I am the best target market for this product but it impressed me.
