AWS adds new features to Amazon Connect

Amazon Web Services (AWS) has announced three new capabilities for its omnichannel cloud contact center Amazon Connect.

Powered by artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML), Amazon Connect simplifies automated interactions, provides insights into customer sentiment, authenticates callers, and facilitates features, such as interactive voice response (IVR) and chatbots.

AWS said the software’s new features will assist contact center agents in making customer interactions more effective, personal, and natural. The firm also outlined three key capabilities: Amazon Connect Voice ID, Amazon Connect Wisdom, and high-volume outbound communications.

Amazon Voice ID analyzes speech attributes like rhythm, pitch, and tone to create a secure digital voiceprint, streamlining the authentication experience for customers on their next call. The opt-in feature also allows businesses to build custom watchlists with audio recordings of known fraudsters, increasing protection against scams.

Designed to save agents' time, Amazon Connect Wisdom offers instant access to varied product and service information. Integrated connectors for third-party applications, such as Salesforce and ServiceNow, allow businesses to seamlessly connect relevant knowledge repositories, including internal wikis, FAQs, and file shares.

Additionally, Wisdom analyzes customer conversations using speech analytics and provides real-time feedback and recommendations to agents.

Lastly, Amazon Connect’s high-volume outbound communications for calls, texts, and emails provides businesses with an easy and cost-effective way to reach millions of potential customers.

Among the new communication capability is a predictive dialer that proactively contacts customers from a list while adjusting to fit agents' availability. Furthermore, the dialer uses machine learning to distinguish between active customers, voicemail, and busy signals, ensuring agents only connect to live customers.

“With tens of thousands of AWS customers after just four years and more than 10 million customer interactions every day, Amazon Connect has become one of AWS’s fastest-growing services ever,” said Pasquale DeMaio, general manager of Amazon Connect at AWS.

“Today’s three features build on this powerful foundation to make it even simpler for contact centers to provide superior customer service. Now, businesses can give agents the ability to find answers faster, provide customers with a more secure and efficient experience, and quickly scale their outbound communications.”