Agent Guides for Amazon Connect. The most powerful feature AWS has launched to date?

Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past six years, you’ll already know that AWS offers a very powerful and flexible cloud contact centre solution: Amazon Connect. Connect has taken the CX world by storm, achieving astonishing growth and client uptake around the world. And whilst AWS does not publish official customer counts or user numbers, it would be safe to assume that Amazon Connect is into the hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of users globally.

Before we dive into “Step-by-Step Guides”, it’s worth remembering where Amazon Connect came from. Originally developed by Amazon Shopping to support its own in-house global customer support operations, the team at AWS realised they were on to something. The contact centre technology market had gone a bit stale, with an over-reliance on expensive, on-prem, and difficult to maintain telco solutions. Yet the consumer demand for better quality, faster, and digital-first experiences was escalating (some might say these demands were fuelled by Amazon themselves).

So, in Q2 2017 Amazon Connect was launched to the public and, even in the early days, it was clear that AWS had hit the nail on the head. And we can say that with a high level of confidence because our previous business was one of the earliest UK adopters of Amazon Connect, and we were selling and implementing the solution by summer of that same year.

Originally, Amazon Connect was offered as a voice-only platform which, supported by powerful native NLP & TTS capabilities (Amazon Lex & Polly), was enough to start many contact centre operators on their cloud transformation journey. The digital channels soon followed, along with ongoing enhancements to the agent workspace. In more recent years AWS has launched a raft of powerful contact centre-specific features and functionality, including Contact Lens (conversational analytics & quality management), Wisdom (knowledge base parsing), VoiceID (voice biometrics), and Customer Profiles (single view of customer data).

The most recent release - Step by Step Guides - is arguably the most powerful functionality yet.

One of the biggest challenges that contact centres face is onboarding new agents and getting them up to speed with their agent application, supporting systems, and CX processes. Until agents become proficient, more time is needed to address customer queries effectively. Add to this the fact that contact centres on average have an annual agent attrition rate of between 30-45%. So, improving an agent’s immediate productivity is a top priority for most.

With Step-by-Step guides for Amazon Connect, organisations can provide customised experiences for agents, enabling them to deliver exceptional service from the first day on the job. Step-by-Step guides allow the creation of workflows and processes for your agents to follow. Custom/third-party plug-ins can also be utilised to bring live customer information into the agent experience, reducing the number of systems agents need to use, and improving the overall contact handling experience - shrinking handle times, and reducing agent stress!

The potential use cases for this functionality are as vast as they are impactful, particularly if you’re looking to improve customer experience, drive up efficiency, and reduce costs in your contact centre. Some examples include:

Action Common Resolutions

Via integration with your back-office systems, we can provide visual prompts and action buttons in the agent workspace. For example, to instantly process a refund, start a new claim, upgrade/upsell etc. No doubt you can immediately think of multiple processes that could be more intuitive and faster for your agents to complete. The example below shows how this functionality could be utilised for an insurance provider.

Agent Scripting & Automated Coaching

If you prefer your agents to work from scripted messages, whether for brand consistency, regulatory, or compliance reasons, we can incorporate scenario scripting and next action into the Amazon Connect agent workspace. The Step-by-Step Guides are fully configurable to your exact customer service processes, utilising your customer data to automate and speed-up contact handling processes. The example below shows Amazon Connect agent workspace guiding the agent through an insurance claim handling process.

Contact Disposition & Notes

No more typing notes and follow-up actions into a CRM or Case Management system. With Step-by-Step guides we can provide for all your customised post-contact processes, helping to reduce the amount of time agents spend in wrap-up, and improving the quality of interaction reporting and follow-ups.

Agent-Initiated Outbound Messaging

Improve first contact resolution by enabling agents to execute outbound messages direct from the agent workspace (for example, send a confirmation email, send a link via SMS, start a payment etc.)

Third-Party System Integration

Reduce handling times by up to 35%, by bringing all of your back-office data and information sources into the single agent view. We can create rules and workflows that surface the most relevant information at the right time, and push information back into your CRM/data lake.

Driving up efficiency & levelling-up customer experience

With Step-by-Step Guides and the Amazon Connect agent workspace agents can accept a call, a chat, or a task and be given the necessary information about the customer and the case, plus real-time recommendations, all in one place without the need to switch between applications. And according to AWS the new agent workspace has helped customers to:

1. Reduce onboarding time by 50%

2. Reduce average time to proficiency by 40%

3. Reduce average handling time by 35%

Those are very impressive numbers, by anyone’s standards.

If you want to investigate updating and upgrading your Amazon Connect CCP to the agent workspace with Step-by-Step guides, get in touch with us today. Our team of Amazon Connect experts combine AWS technology, years of CX expertise, and tech smarts to make sure you get a solution that delivers.

AWS customers can also procure our services via AWS Marketplace, which keeps things easy for you, and enables our team to get straight on with your project!