Amazon Connect

Amazon Connect is a cloud-based contact center service that enables businesses to provide omnichannel customer service (voice and chat) with pay-as-you-go pricing. It’s scalable, easy to set up, and integrates with AWS services to provide intelligent, automated, and human-assisted interactions. It provides a unified view of all contact center functionality and configurations.

amazon-connect.png

Key Features

  1. Omnichannel: Supports both voice and chat.
  2. No upfront cost means, Pay only for usage. Per-minute for voice/chat.
  3. AI/ML Integration:
    1. Amazon Lex for natural language chatbots.
    2. Amazon Polly for text-to-speech responses.
    3. Amazon Transcribe for real-time call transcription.
    4. Amazon Comprehend for sentiment analysis.
  4. Use AWS Lambda to connect to databases or business logic.
  5. Easily scales to handle thousands of agents.

Security & Control

  1. Uses IAM roles/policies for access.
  2. Encrypts call recordings and customer data using AWS KMS.
  3. Compliance: HIPAA, GDPR, PCI, etc

Common Use Cases

  1. Banking and Finance customer service
  2. Retail order tracking and support
  3. Healthcare appointment scheduling
  4. IT Helpdesk automation
  5. Replaces traditional call center infrastructure.

Other Details

  1. It is a managed application and does not code, build, or publish new websites.

Example Use Case: Bank Customer Calls to Check Balance

Scenario: A customer calls the bank’s customer service to check their account balance.

  1. Customer dials the bank's supportnumber (hosted in Amazon Connect).
  2. Amazon Connect answers the call using a contact flow.
  3. Amazon Lex interacts with the customer to ask for account number.
  4. Customer responds (via speech or keypad).
  5. Lex passes the input to an AWS Lambda function.
  6. Lambda retrieves the balance from a backend database (e.g., DynamoDB, RDS).
  7. Amazon Polly converts the balance into speech and responds to the customer.
  8. If needed, Connect routes to a human agent with chat/call history.

Setup, Login, and Dashboard Overview

Launch Amazon Connect Instance from AWS Console create-connect-console.png

Login URL generated after instance creation: https://XXXX.my.connect.aws/login.

amazon-connect-login.png

Explore the Amazon Connect Dashboard amazon-connect-login.png

Amazon Connect dashboard features

  1. Amazon Q – AI assistant for agents, offering real-time guidance, summaries, and recommendations.
  2. Analytics and optimization – View and analyze performance metrics to improve contact center efficiency.
  3. Routing – Configure contact flows and routing profiles to control how interactions are directed.
  4. Users – Manage users, roles, permissions, and agent settings.
  5. Outbound campaigns – Set up and manage automated outbound calling campaigns.
  6. Content Management – Store and manage reusable content like scripts, prompts, and knowledge articles.
  7. Agent applications – Customize and manage the agent interface and tool integrations.
  8. Customer Profiles – Create unified customer profiles using data from various AWS and external sources.

Question: Amazon Connect console - Routing

A customer experience designer wants to create a new flow to customize the interactive voice response (IVR) experience for customers. Which section in the Amazon Connect console should they access?

  1. Routing (Correct Answer)
  2. Analytics and optimization
  3. Channels
  4. Users

Explanation: The Routing menu includes Flows, where customer experience designers can define how a customer experiences the contact center from start to finish, including customizing the IVR system.