Amazon Web Services Launches Self-Service, Cloud-Based Contact Center

Amazon Web Services announced Tuesday (March 28) the launch of Amazon Connect, a self-service, cloud-based contact center service that makes it easy for any business to deliver customer service at lower cost.

In a press release, Amazon Web Services (AWS) said Amazon Connect is based on the same contact center technology used by Amazon customer service associates around the world to power millions of customer conversations. Setting up a cloud-based contact center with Amazon Connect requires on a few clicks in the AWS Management Console, and agents can begin taking calls within minutes. Amazon said there are no up-front payments or long-term commitments and no infrastructure to manage with Amazon Connect; customers pay by the minute for Amazon Connect usage plus any associated telephony services.

“Ten years ago, we made the decision to build our own customer contact center technology from scratch because legacy solutions did not provide the scale, cost structure and features we needed to deliver excellent customer service for our customers around the world,” said Tom Weiland, vice president of worldwide customer service at Amazon, said in the press release. “This choice has been a differentiator for us, as it is used today by our agents around the world in the millions of interactions they have with our customers. We’re excited to offer this technology to customers as an AWS service — with all of the simplicity, flexibility, reliability and cost-effectiveness of the cloud.”

According to Amazon, while the contact center is the front line for a company’s customers, far too often contact center solutions are hard to use and costly. Companies are often required to invest in proprietary hardware and software that can take months or longer to get up and running. They also require skills to configure and consultants to implement, Amazon said in the release. With Amazon Connect, customers can set up and configure a “Virtual Contact Center” in minutes. There is no infrastructure to deploy or manage, so customers can scale their Amazon Connect Virtual 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. Amazon Connect’s self-service graphical interface makes it easy for non-technical users to design contact flows, manage agents and track performance metrics — there are no specialized skills required, the company noted in the release.