Amazon Lex integration with Genesys PureCloud IVR now available

We are excited to announce the general availability of the Amazon Lex and Genesys PureCloud integrated interactive voice response (IVR) solution. First launched in preview at re:Invent 2017, the solution allows Genesys customers to integrate Amazon Lex chatbots into the PureCloud  IVR flows to provide an enhanced conversational experience.

About Genesys PureCloud

The Genesys PureCloud platform is a cloud omnichannel contact center solution. PureCloud customers can take advantage of the capability of Amazon Lex to better understand natural language input. This enables IVR flows to recognize not only what consumers are saying, but also their intent. This deepened understanding means that when consumers reach out to a company, their calls are directed efficiently to the appropriate resources, resulting in improved first-call resolution. The integrated solution will also allow businesses to consolidate multiple interactions into a single flow that can be applied over different self-service channels, reducing the number of call flows a business will need to maintain and simplifying contact center administration and support.

Integration of Amazon Lex and PureCloud

In this section, we describe the PureCloud and Amazon Lex configuration required to enable the integration.

To integrate the Amazon Lex chatbot into your PureCloud IVR, first you need to install the integration from Genesys AppFoundry in your PureCloud account. After the installation is complete, it will be available in your PureCloud Admin/Integrations tab. You can now configure and activate the integration.

Next, you need to grant PureCloud IVR permissions to access resources in your AWS account. To do this, you create an AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) role. This role is assigned to Amazon Lex later, when you configure and activate the app in PureCloud. Create the role by logging into the IAM console and navigating to the Create role page:

Choose Next to assign permissions. Select the AmazonLexReadOnly and AmazonLexRunBotsOnly policies check boxes. The read-only role enables PureCloud to access bot configurations, such as intents. The run bots only role provides access to Amazon Lex conversational APIs, so that audio can be sent at runtime. After the role is created you will receive a role Amazon Resource Name (ARN). You will need this credential when you configure the IVR flow.

Now, that you have set up your AWS account with the right credentials to access the Amazon Lex bot, you can active the Amazon Lex integration in PureCloud. Under PureCloud Admin/Integrations choose Add Integration. Locate the Amazon Lex integration and choose install. After the integration has been installed, choose More/Edit Configuration and enter the Role ARN from the previous step.

Create a Lex chatbot using the Amazon Lex console. Define the interaction model, create intents and slot types, add sample training data, and set up the conversation flow. Publish the bot after you have tested it and ready to use in IVR flows.

You are now ready to make a call to the Lex bot from the PureCloud IVR.  Use the ‘Call Lex Bot’ action to run self-service applications within a flow before or instead of routing a customer to an agent. Use this action in inbound, in-queue, and outbound call flow types. Bot Names will automatically populate from your published AWS bots. Also, the intents and slots configured for the Lex bot that you selected will automatically populate to map to PureCloud variables.

To learn more, refer to the PureCloud/Amazon Lex FAQs. For more information and instructions on configuring the Amazon Lex integration, see the documentation.

About the Author

As a Product Manager on the Amazon Lex team, Harshal Pimpalkhute spends his time trying to get machines to engage (nicely) with humans.