This Guidance demonstrates how to build a seamless conversational interface between guests and customer service agents. Through voice, chat, and text channels, customer interactions can be retrieved by customer service agents, securely saved, and tracked for errors or exceptions, all through a secure, SSL connection.
Architecture Diagram
Step 1
Customer Service Agents will use a private web site to get customers interactions, history, and conversations from multiple channels. This web site runs in containers manage by AWS Fargate and Application Load Balancer.
Step 2
Agent credentials are managed by Amazon Cognito with API tokens used for secure API data exchange.
Step 3
Amazon API Gateway handles the request for customer engagement data through AWS Lambda functions which retrieve it from Amazon DynamoDB.
Step 4
DynamoDB holds all customers data, reservations, and engagements (such as emails, chatbots, and contact center interactions).
Step 5
Amazon Lex for chatbot communication is one of the channels that saves customer engagement data into DynamoDB.
Step 6
Amazon Simple Email Service (Amazon SES) is another channel that saves email messages with the customer. The engagement is saved in Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) as raw data. Safe, relevant data is saved into DynamoDB.
Step 7
Amazon CloudWatch logs all interactions, and tracks application errors and exceptions.
Step 8
AWS Certificate Manager is used to provide certifications to stablish secure SSL connections.
Step 1
Customer Service Agents will use a private web site to get customers interactions, history, and conversations from multiple channels. This web site runs in containers manage by AWS Fargate and Application Load Balancer.
Step 2
Agent credentials are managed by Amazon Cognito with API tokens used for secure API data exchange.
Step 3
Amazon API Gateway handles the request for customer engagement data through AWS Lambda functions which retrieve it from Amazon DynamoDB.
Step 4
DynamoDB holds all customers data, reservations, and engagements (such as emails, chatbots, and contact center interactions).
Step 5
Amazon Lex for chatbot communication is one of the channels that saves customer engagement data into DynamoDB.
Step 6
Amazon Simple Email Service (Amazon SES) is another channel that saves email messages with the customer. The engagement is saved in Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) as raw data. Safe, relevant data is saved into DynamoDB.
Step 7
Amazon CloudWatch logs all interactions, and tracks application errors and exceptions.
Step 8
AWS Certificate Manager is used to provide certifications to stablish secure SSL connections.
Well-Architected Pillars
The AWS Well-Architected Framework helps you understand the pros and cons of the decisions you make when building systems in the cloud. The six pillars of the Framework allow you to learn architectural best practices for designing and operating reliable, secure, efficient, cost-effective, and sustainable systems. Using the AWS Well-Architected Tool, available at no charge in the AWS Management Console, you can review your workloads against these best practices by answering a set of questions for each pillar.
The architecture diagram above is an example of a Solution created with Well-Architected best practices in mind. To be fully Well-Architected, you should follow as many Well-Architected best practices as possible.
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Operational ExcellenceRead the Operational Excellence whitepaper
The Guidance is deployed using AWS CloudFormation. You can add it to your own development pipeline to deploy in a test environment.
CloudWatch provides observability through the collection of metrics and logs, as well as customizable dashboards.
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SecurityRead the Security whitepaper
Amazon Cognito user pools use an identity provider (IdP) for built-in user management.
Lambda only allows users access to the services they need with the least-privilege roles.
The customer's data in DynamoDB is encrypted at rest.
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ReliabilityRead the Reliability whitepaper
The serverless elements such as Lambda functions, DynamoDB, Amazon Cognito, and Fargate have high availability and automatically scale based on demand. DynamoDB deploys with cross-Region failover for higher availability.
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Performance EfficiencyRead the Performance Efficiency whitepaper
The serverless elements allow you to provision the exact resources that the workload needs. CloudWatch Alarms and Lambda metrics allow monitoring for expected performance. For more unexpected traffic, configure DynamoDB as on-demand, as this service is originally provisioned for consistent traffic.
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Cost OptimizationRead the Cost Optimization whitepaper
Serverless elements use a pay-per-value pricing model and scale based on demand.
If you want to further optimize cost, you should share the same key-value tag for assets that belong to the project programmatically and create custom reports in AWS Cost Explorer based on the tags that you have created.
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SustainabilityRead the Sustainability whitepaper
Using only the resources that the workload needs, you minimize the environmental impact of the backend and storage services.
Implementation Resources
A detailed guide is provided to experiment and use within your AWS account. Each stage of building the Guidance, including deployment, usage, and cleanup, is examined to prepare it for deployment.
The sample code is a starting point. It is industry validated, prescriptive but not definitive, and a peek under the hood to help you begin.
Disclaimer
The sample code; software libraries; command line tools; proofs of concept; templates; or other related technology (including any of the foregoing that are provided by our personnel) is provided to you as AWS Content under the AWS Customer Agreement, or the relevant written agreement between you and AWS (whichever applies). You should not use this AWS Content in your production accounts, or on production or other critical data. You are responsible for testing, securing, and optimizing the AWS Content, such as sample code, as appropriate for production grade use based on your specific quality control practices and standards. Deploying AWS Content may incur AWS charges for creating or using AWS chargeable resources, such as running Amazon EC2 instances or using Amazon S3 storage.
References to third-party services or organizations in this Guidance do not imply an endorsement, sponsorship, or affiliation between Amazon or AWS and the third party. Guidance from AWS is a technical starting point, and you can customize your integration with third-party services when you deploy the architecture.