Amazon Connect update improves agent productivity for large-scale outreach

Amazon Web Services Inc.’s cloud contact center service, Amazon Connect, has today gained some powerful new features designed to help improve agent productivity and promote organizational outreach.

Amazon Connect is an easy-to-use omni-channel cloud contact center service that businesses can use to support customer service and customer engagement. Customer service representatives will be able to respond to customer phone or chat inquiries in the same way as setting up and managing the contact center infrastructure locally.

According to the company, the service was launched in 2017 and has proven to be a huge success, with “tens of thousands of AWS customers” using the service to support more than 10 million contact center interactions every day.

With so many interactions happening every day, it is obvious that Amazon Connect agents must be very busy people, so Amazon believes that it is time to help these agents by launching its real-time agent assistance tool, Amazon Connect, which is generally available today.

This tool can be thought of as a virtual agent of a contact center agent. It connects to various company databases, FAQs and help articles, and platforms such as Salesforce and ServiceNow to display information that agents need to resolve customer issues faster.

It becomes even more useful when used with Contact Lens, Amazon Connect’s sentiment analysis tool. In this way, Amazon Connect Wisdom can use machine learning-driven voice analysis to automatically detect the caller’s problem and immediately recommend content that can help the agent solve the problem.

This means that agents can avoid time-consuming manual searches, allowing them to process multiple customer calls faster. For example, if the caller mentions that the product is “damaged when it arrives,” Amazon Connect Wisdom will automatically display instructions on how to replace the item. Then all the agent has to do is to associate the details with the caller.

Another problem Amazon Connect is helping to solve is the laborious caller authentication process. In order to verify the identity of the caller, the call center agent needs to request personal information, such as social security number, date of birth, mother’s maiden name, etc. This takes time and can cause a lot of frustration, especially for those who call the call center regularly.

The launch of Amazon Connect Voice ID provides a new option that allows callers to use their voice to authenticate themselves. If the caller decides to register, the service will use machine learning to analyze attributes such as rhythm, pitch, and intonation in the first few seconds of the call. Amazon explains that these attributes can be used to create a unique digital voiceprint for each caller. The service assigns a confidence score and only authenticates the caller when the score meets the confidence score threshold set by the organization.

If the caller fails to reach the threshold, they can still authenticate in the old way by answering questions. Another advantage of Amazon Connect Voice ID is that it can learn to recognize the voices of known fraudsters and automatically mark any calls they make.

The final update announced today is a very important update that can extend the usefulness of Amazon Connect. A preview version is now available, and High-Volume Outbound Communications supports large-scale outreach using phone calls, text messages, and email.

As Amazon explains, this is very useful for businesses that may be restricted by traditional contact center platforms that only allow inbound communication, which use separate tools and apps for outreach. With Amazon Connect, the company can contact millions of customers every day to let them know about new marketing promotions, appointment reminders, upcoming delivery notifications, or any other information they need to know.

Amazon said that one of the key features to achieve this goal is the “predictive dialer,” which can automatically call customers on the list while restricting outreach based on agent availability. The dialer uses machine learning, so it can recognize when a real person picks up the phone to ensure that the agent only contacts the real person.

For example, Amazon said that the healthcare network can send text messages to patients asking them to confirm upcoming appointments. Then, it can automatically call those who have not responded within a certain time frame.

Pasquale DeMaio, general manager of Amazon Connect, said: “In just four years, AWS customers have reached tens of thousands, with more than 10 million customer interactions per day, and Amazon Connect has become one of the fastest growing services in AWS history.” Today’s three functions are built on this powerful foundation, making it easier for contact centers to provide excellent customer service. Now, companies can allow agents to find answers faster, provide customers with a safer and more efficient experience, and Quickly expand their external communications.”

Photo: guvo59/Pixabay