How Microsoft Uses Cyara to Protect Customer Connections and Build Trust at Global Scale
From manually testing phone lines around the world to automating call monitoring and protecting outbound caller identity, Microsoft relies on Cyara to help ensure critical customer communications work as expected.
The Challenge: When Critical Customer Calls Go Unanswered
For a company operating at Microsoft’s scale, reliable customer communications aren’t optional. Every call represents an opportunity to serve a customer, build trust, and protect the company’s reputation.
But ensuring phone numbers and call flows worked consistently across countries was once an incredibly manual process.
Before adopting Cyara and Spearline, Microsoft’s teams relied on employees in different countries to test phone numbers and validate end-to-end call flows. In some cases, that meant calling local businesses—including hotels and pizza restaurants—simply to confirm calls could successfully connect.
“Back in the day, before Cyara and Spearline, we would actually find employees in different countries to generate test groups.”
It was an approach that couldn’t scale, especially for a company managing customer communications across a global footprint.
Then came an incident that brought the limitations of manual testing into sharp focus.
Microsoft’s primary customer-facing phone number, 1-800-MICROSOFT, went down. The team didn’t know about the outage for 90 minutes.
It wasn’t until a delivery partner contacted Microsoft’s command center to report that no calls had come through that the issue was identified.
For Microsoft, the implications went well beyond missed calls.
“It wasn’t just a dollar cost, it was a reputational cost.”
The incident underscored a critical reality: relying on people to periodically test phone numbers wasn’t enough. Microsoft needed a more scalable, proactive way to validate customer communications around the clock.
The Solution: Moving From Manual Testing to Automated Assurance
By leveraging Cyara’s automated testing and monitoring capabilities, Microsoft gained a way to address the limitations of manual call validation.
Instead of depending on employees in different countries to make test calls, Microsoft could take a more systematic approach to validating critical phone numbers and end-to-end call flows.
The need was straightforward but essential: ensure customers could successfully connect with Microsoft, regardless of where they were calling from.
Automated testing offered a more scalable alternative to the manual processes that had previously made global call validation so difficult.
As the Microsoft representative explained:
“We can’t rely on humans to test. Certainly not to test once or twice an hour, every hour, 24 hours a day.”
For an organization with Microsoft’s global reach, the value extends beyond operational efficiency. It’s about reducing the risk of undetected communication failures that can disrupt customer experiences and damage brand trust.
The Next Challenge: Protecting Caller Identity in an Outbound-First World
As Microsoft’s business evolves, so do its communication challenges.
The company is increasingly shifting toward an outbound calling model, introducing new complexities around caller identification, brand recognition, and call deliverability.
Across global markets, legitimate business calls can be incorrectly labeled as spam, display unexpected caller information, or be blocked entirely.
These issues create friction for customers and make it more difficult for Microsoft to connect with the people it serves.
For Microsoft, ensuring a call successfully connects is only part of the equation. The company also needs to understand how that call appears to the recipient.
That’s where Cyara’s Number Trust capabilities play an increasingly important role.
The Solution: Seeing Every Call Through the Customer’s Eyes
With Number Trust, Microsoft can gain visibility into how outbound calls from its cloud platform appear to customers.
This helps its teams better understand caller ID presentation, branding issues, and potential spam labeling across different markets.
“Number Trust actually helps us see what the customer would see when we’re calling from our cloud platform.”
Previously, validating that experience could require an almost comically manual process: finding someone in another country, asking them to receive a call, and requesting a screenshot of their phone to see how the caller information appeared.
Now, Cyara provides a more scalable way to gain that visibility.
For Microsoft, the value is particularly significant as outbound communications become a larger part of its business model.
By helping identify how calls are presented to recipients, Number Trust supports Microsoft’s efforts to protect its brand identity and deliver more trustworthy customer interactions.
The Impact: From Reactive Troubleshooting to Greater Confidence
Microsoft’s relationship with Cyara reflects a broader transformation in how enterprises approach customer communication assurance.
What began as a need to move beyond inefficient, manual call testing has evolved into a more comprehensive focus on global visibility, reliability, and caller trust.
The partnership addresses three critical business priorities:
- Greater operational efficiency: Reducing dependence on manual testing across global markets.
- Improved visibility: Helping teams validate end-to-end calling experiences and understand how outbound calls appear to recipients.
- Stronger brand protection: Supporting efforts to identify caller ID issues, spam labeling, and potential call blocking before they undermine customer confidence.
Perhaps the strongest endorsement comes from Microsoft’s description of how important Number Trust has become to its operations.
“They’ve done a great job in expanding the Number Trust product that we can’t live without it.”
Looking Ahead: Making Every Customer Connection Count
As enterprise communications become increasingly complex, reliable connectivity and trusted caller identity are becoming essential components of the customer experience.
For Microsoft, the evolution from manually calling businesses around the world to leveraging automated testing and Number Trust illustrates how dramatically the expectations for communication assurance have changed.
With Cyara, Microsoft is better equipped to address those challenges at global scale—helping protect critical customer connections, strengthen trust, and support its evolving communications strategy.
Because for a business like Microsoft, every customer call matters. And knowing those calls work—and appear as intended—is fundamental to delivering a trusted customer experience.