Why Amazon Connect for the Modern-day Contact Centre?

In recent years the role of the contact centre agent has become increasingly more involved. The number of software applications and subsequent need for multi-tasking has continued to deepen, with the level of skills required to successfully manage customer interactions dramatically expanding. This new age places immense pressure on operators to hire, train and retain, select and deploy the right systems and software, and keep agents motivated and engaged. That’s not to mention the ever-growing service expectations of the modern consumer, or the need to deliver on an ever-tightening cost line.

A large proportion of inbound contact in any contact centre environment tends to be for the basics, and for most consumers their priority is getting an answer and then moving on. So the world’s leading contact centres focus on removing friction for the customer. This has been a core element of Amazon’s strategy for a decade - and look where the company is now! It started as an unknown online bookseller in 1994 and grew to become the world’s leading online retailer, and the leader in cloud services with a $890 billion market cap.

Supporting a customer base of over 100m Prime subscribers, 45% of whom order something at leastonce per week means that Amazon simply has to deliver the most efficient customer service operation possible. With some 70,000 service agents operating globally an off-the-shelf or hardwaredependent solution would not deliver the required flexibility or scalability, so Amazon chose to develop its own cloud-based contact centre voice solution, Amazon Connect.

And just as it did with Amazon Marketplace, Amazon Fulfillment, AWS, Amazon Pay, Amazon Go Store Technology and now Amazon Connect, Amazon has taken innovation they have developed internally and opened it up as a platform for users. Benefiting from the robustness and scalability of the AWS cloud network, Connect is a highly configurable and elastic contact centre solution that runs in the browser empowering “work anywhere” flexibility with no on-premise hardware requirements.

Uniquely with Amazon Connect there are no per-agent licence fees. Instead, you pay based on the number of customer-minutes and the amount of phone time that you consume. This scalable, pay-as-you-go model means that you can use Amazon Connect in situations where your call volume is unpredictable, spiky, or both. So let’s take a closer look at some of the major features and benefits of Amazon Connect, and how it can help you to supercharge your contact centre performance.

Key Benefits of Amazon Connect

Cloud-based

Amazon Connect is an integral part of AWS, and is designed to be robust, scalable, and highly available. Each contact centre instance runs in 55 AWS Availability Zones around the world, meaningit’s a system you can always depend on, as well as being available anywhere. As long as your agent has a network connection, they can use Amazon Connect.

Scalable & Elastic

There is no infrastructure to deploy or manage, so you can scale your Amazon Connect contact center up or down, onboarding up to tens of thousands of agents in response to business cycles and paying only for the time callers are interacting with Amazon Connect plus any associated telephony charges.

Flexible

The Contact Flow Editor (CFE) that powers Amazon Connect includes blocks for interaction, integration, control flow, branching, and more. Call flows can include a mixture of pre-recorded audio prompts, generated audio, natural voice recognition and interaction, integration with existing systems and databases, conversations with agents, call transfers, and more.

Almost Limitless Integration Capability

Amazon Connect is an open platform so can be integrated with other systems such as your CRM, eCommerce, CMS solutions or the AWS platform. Deep integration with your existing software enables better and more instant service across multiple channels, driving improved efficiency and customer satisfaction.

AI Enabled

Help your organisation operate more efficiently and improve the customer experience with Amazon Connect’s AI capabilities. Integrate intelligent conversational bots into contact flows to turn automated interactions into natural conversations. Transcribe Amazon Connect recordings; and extract sentiment and intent from conversations —then mine the data for customer insights.

Economical

Amazon Connect‘s pay-as-you-go model keeps your operating costs in line with actual usage. Elastic scalability with no contract means you’ll never have to pay for seats or licences you’re not using. On the agent side, Amazon Connect includes a softphone that supports high quality audio.