Level up your contact center with Amazon Connect unified agent application

Having a good agent experience is paramount for contact center efficiency, and although businesses have different requirements from the agent application perspective, agents typically need a way to manage contacts across different channels, instantly identify who the customer is, and check their contact history. Most often, agents need to toggle, browse, and search for information across different applications and windows, which increases handling time and worsens the overall customer experience.

To resolve issues faster with less effort, an agent application needs to leverage the customer data to present agents with contextually relevant views. As soon as a customer contact is received, ML-powered tools and services can authenticate the customer based on their voice, proactively identify what their likely issue is, determine the likely solution to the issue, then provide real-time recommendations and guide agents to the resolution.

With Amazon Connect agent application, agents now have an intuitive, single-screen user interface to help them effectively handle calls, chats, and tasks (Amazon Connect Contact Control Panel), view and update customer information (Amazon Connect Customer Profiles), receive real-time caller authentication (Amazon Connect Voice ID), and real-time agent assistance (Amazon Connect Wisdom).

In this blog we will walk you through a sample use-case of an emergency Road Assistance service. We will teach you how to make use of all the features mentioned above, in a single-pane-of-glass, with Amazon Connect agent application.

Solution Overview

This solution utilizes Amazon Connect agent application that consolidates all Amazon Connect features into a single, easy to use experience:

Amazon Connect Contact Control Panel (CCP) provides a single user interface for agents to communicate with customers across different channels. It enables agents to see all contacts (calls, chats and tasks) they have accepted, listed in chronological order determined by the time contacts were accepted.
Amazon Connect Voice ID leverages machine learning to provide real-time caller authentication and fraud risk detection, making voice interactions faster and more secure.
Amazon Connect Customer Profiles equips contact center agents with a view of a customer’s profile with the most up to date information, helping agents provide a more personalized customer service.
Amazon Connect Wisdom delivers agents the information they need, helping to reduce the time spent searching for answers

Walkthrough

In the first interaction, customer is calling AnyCompany Customer Support Service to find more information about an international emergency breakdown coverage policy. As soon as our customer is connected to an agent, and starts explaining his request, Amazon Connect Wisdom will listen, and provide suitable knowledge article recommendations to the agent in real-time to help the agent find the most relevant information as quickly as possible. During this call, the agent will leverage Customer Profiles to store all relevant customer data, and proactively request the customer’s consent to enroll them into Voice ID, to efficiently authenticate the customer in future voice interactions.

Once all of the customer’s details have been gathered, the agent and the customer can continue with the customer’s original inquiry regarding the international road assistance coverage when traveling abroad.

The Agent will also make sure sufficient customer audio was captured to complete Voice ID enrollment, which will be displayed as ‘Successfully Enrolled’ in the agent application.

By completing this first call, we have demonstrated how Amazon Connect Wisdom has provided suitable recommendations to the agent regarding the customer’s query, and the process of setting up both Amazon Connect Voice ID voice authentication, and Amazon Connect Customer Profiles for storing customer’s data and contact history.

In our second call, the customer is requesting emergency road assistance, due to a car breakdown on their journey abroad. Amazon Connect agent application is designed to automatically present customer data and contact history from Customer Profiles, as well as a status of the voice authentication with Voice ID. Based on the customer request, Wisdom will display suitable knowledge articles to guide the agent through the best course of action so they can help the customer as quickly as possible

While the agent and customer are discussing the situation, Voice ID will provide a successful outcome of the voice authentication process, with an appropriate message in the agent application. As soon as the customer is authenticated, the agent will create an Amazon Connect Task for a back office team to dispatch a towing vehicle to the customer.

Prerequisites

An AWS account
Access to AWS CLI
An existing Amazon Connect instance
Voice ID enabled for your instance (Create a new Voice ID domain and encryption key)
Customer Profiles enabled for your instance (Enable Customer Profiles for your instance)
Wisdom enabled for your instance (Ingesting content to power real-time recommendations and search with Amazon Connect Wisdom)

Step-by-step instructions

First, we are going to configure Amazon Connect Wisdom:

For the purpose of this blog post, we are creating two simple web pages, that are going to be ingested in the Knowledge Base.

Please create an empty HTML file in your favorite editor and copy/paste the following code, then save your file as internationalCoverage.html


<html>

<body>
    <h3>What is the international coverage for the road assistance service?</h3>
    <p>
        Our service covers United Kingdom. International coverage includes Spain, Switzerland, France and Germany
        for up to 20 days per year.
    </p>
</body>

</html>

Please create another empty HTML file in your favourite editor and copy/paste the following code, then save your file as carbreakdownGuide.html


<html>

<body>
    <h3>My car has broken down I need help</h3>
    <p>
        1. Ask the customer to attempt to pull over. Turn on the hazard lights. Leave the car
        <br>
        2. Ask if there is a medical emergency <br>
        3. Ask for the location <br>
        4. Create a Task with the back office team to have the vehicle towed<br>
    </p>
</body>

</html>

Upload internationalCoverage.html and carbreakdownGuide.html files to your Amazon S3 bucket.
That will trigger the ingestion process into your Wisdom Knowledge Base.

Before we run our test calls, we need to make sure we have the right agent experience enabled:

Log into your Amazon Connect instance as administrator
Select User Management from the Users section of the left panel
Click on Add new users, selecting Create and configure a new user when prompted, then click Next
Enter the test users details (First Name, Last Name, Login name, Email address and Password)
Select the Basic Routing Profile from the Routing Profile dropdown
Select Agent from the Security Profiles drop-down
Leave all other options as default, and Click on Save
On the next screen, select Create users
Once created, click on Back and you should be able to see new newly created agent
Select Security profiles from the Users option in the left panel
Click on the Agent profile and ensure the following options are selected:
1. From the Contact Control Panel (CCP) section, enable Voice ID Access
2. Under Customer profiles enable All
3. In the Agent Applications section, enable View for Wisdom
4. Save the Agent Security Profile changes

To allow agent to assign an Amazon Connect Task to our back office team:

Create a Queue:

Select Queues from the Routing section of the left panel
Click on Add new queue
Give the queue a name such as DispatchTowVehicle
Add a description
For the purpose of this demo, choose Basic Hours for Hours of operation and leave all other options as default
Click on Add new queue

Create a Quick Connect:

Select Quick connects from the Routing section of the left panel
Click on Add new
Give a name such as DispatchTowVehicle
Select Type as Queue and Destination as the name of the Queue created in the previous step
For Contact Flow select Default queue transfer and give a Description
Click on Save
To associate the Quick connect with the BasicQueue, select Queues from the Routing section of the left panel
Click on BasicQueue
Choose DispatchTowVehicle under the Quick connects section
Click on Save

Finally, we need to setup our Contact Flow:

Select Contact Flows from the Routing section on the left panel
Select Create contact flow, and Import the following file UnifiedAgentApp
Click on the Wisdom contact flow block and select your Wisdom domain from the list under Set Manually
In the Set working queue select BasicQueue
Save and Publish the new Contact Flow
Click on Phone Numbers from Routing in the left panel
Select Claim a number and select a suitable test number (remember to choose a DID to remain under Amazon Connect free tier)
Select the Contact flow / IVR we just imported and configured in the previous steps, then click on Save

Agent application

Access Amazon Connect agent application using the following link: https://<instance name>.my.connect.aws/agent-app-v2
Login using the Agent user credentials created earlier
Amazon Connect Contact Control Panel (CCP) is on the left side of the page. Agents use CCP to interact with customer contacts. It’s how they receive calls, chat with customers, transfer them to other agents, put them on hold, and perform other key actions
Amazon Connect Customer Profiles is in the middle of the page. Customer Profiles equips contact center agents with a unified view of a customer’s profile, with the most up to date information, to provide personalized customer service
Amazon Connect Wisdom is on the right of the page. Wisdom delivers agents the information they need, reducing the time spent searching for answers.

Testing

In order to test the features of the Amazon Connect agent application, please make two phone calls as per the steps below.

Phone Call 1:

To get started, set the Agent to Available state
Make a phone call to the phone number claimed in previous steps
Amazon Connect Contact Flow will greet the customer with a message “Thank you for calling AnyCompany Customer Services” and then the call will be transferred to your agent
Answer the incoming call using Amazon Connect agent application
Since this is the first customer call, your Agent will be presented with:
1. Voice ID status as Not enrolled
2. A new Customer Profile with only phone number pre-populated
In order to enroll the customer into Voice ID, the agent asks the Caller for their consent. Once the consent has been provided, agent clicks on Enroll button within CCP
While Voice ID is gathering the voice sample, click on Edit in the Customer Profiles Tab
Ask the caller for their details such as first name, last name, email address and start adding the information to the customer profile.
Continue the call and ask the caller the reason for the call. The caller could reply with a message similar to “I am trying to find out if you provide Road Assistance service for Switzerland”. As the caller and the Agent are speaking, Amazon Connect Wisdom comes up with a suggestion to the Agent
Add the call reason to the Additional info field and click on Save
Click on the suggestion and open the article – internationalCoverage.html
Meanwhile Voice ID will be creating a voice print of the caller. Have the caller speak until Voice ID enrollment is complete. The Voice ID field in the CCP will display “Enrolled” at this point
Once enrolled, you may disconnect the call

Phone Call 2:

Dial the same phone number again
You will be greeted by your first name, followed by “Thank you for calling AnyCompany Customer Services” and then the call will be transferred to your agent
Answer the incoming call using Amazon Connect agent application
Customer Profiles will surface the customer profile created during the first call
Since customer has not interacted with any self-service application, CCP will show Voice ID status of the caller as “Insufficient audio. Ask the caller to please continue speaking”.
Close this message for Voice ID to continue the authentication process.
Please ask the caller the reason for the call. The caller could reply with a message similar to “My car has broken down, can you please help ?”
As the customer is speaking, Amazon Connect Wisdom will come up with a relevant suggestion
Amazon Connect Voice ID will display “Authenticated” status in the CCP
Create Amazon Connect Task for the Car Tow company to contact the customer with details as per the following image. Click on “Create task“, and ensure you have selected the quick connect DisptachTowVehicle and then click on Create
Amazon Connect Task is sent to the DispatchTowVehicle queue, and would be delivered to an agent staffed in that queue
You may now disconnect the call

Clean up

Navigate to Routing > Phone Numbers, select the phone number we claimed and click on Release

Conclusion

In this blog post we have demonstrated how Amazon Connect agent application can help your agents to reduce handle time and increase their productivity, by providing a single interface to manage customer data, real-time caller authentication, and real-time knowledge base suggestions. To learn more about the newest features of Amazon Connect, please follow this link.

AWS Contact Center