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Amazon Connect – Simple to use, cloud-based contact center

aws.amazon.com

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Re: Amazon Connect – Simple to use, cloud-based contact center

#21

Post by PKop »

kjw wrote: post #2

It's interesting that Amazon continues to move up the stack. This can't be great for folks like Five9, inContact, Genesys, etc. And it's probably incrementally negative for Zendesk, RingCentral, and Twilio - where some percentage of customer use cases is tied to contact centers.

Twilio seems to be promoting this on their blog[0], so can we assume it's powered by Twilio services?

[0] https://www.twilio.com/blog/2017/03/supercharge-your-amazon-...

Edit: yep

https://investors.twilio.com/news/all-news/press-release-det...

Re: Amazon Connect – Simple to use, cloud-based contact center

#22

Post by tclancy »

mxuribe wrote: post #17

Maybe because i'm a noob on telephony dev. but what's a "soft phone"...does that mean that the humans who receive the calls don't actually use traditional phones (like landlines or mobile phones), but rather via their web browsers? Silly question: but if i didn't want my folks to use web browsers, and simply wanted to route a call to whomever is on call (and that person works remote, let's say), I wonder if possible…

Yes, that's basically the idea, a phone number that doesn't belong to a physical device but can be reassigned as needed/ on a schedule.

Re: Amazon Connect – Simple to use, cloud-based contact center

#23

Post by softawre »

kjw wrote: post #2

It's interesting that Amazon continues to move up the stack. This can't be great for folks like Five9, inContact, Genesys, etc. And it's probably incrementally negative for Zendesk, RingCentral, and Twilio - where some percentage of customer use cases is tied to contact centers.

Genesys just bought Interactive Intelligence, whose cloud-only PureCloud contact center offering competes directly with this.

Re: Amazon Connect – Simple to use, cloud-based contact center

#24

Post by tedmiston »

PKop wrote: post #21
kjw wrote: post #2

It's interesting that Amazon continues to move up the stack. This can't be great for folks like Five9, inContact, Genesys, etc. And it's probably incrementally negative for Zendesk, RingCentral, and Twilio - where some percentage of customer use cases is tied to contact centers.

Twilio seems to be promoting this on their blog[0], so can we assume it's powered by Twilio services? [0] https://www.twilio.com/blog/2017/03/supercharge-your-amazon-... Edit: yep https://investors.twilio.com/news/all-news/press-release-det...

I wonder if AWS will turn to Twilio to replace the SMS capabilities of SNS which are aging and limited with respect to modern features such as emojis and long messages.

Re: Amazon Connect – Simple to use, cloud-based contact center

#25

Post by beejiu »

mxuribe wrote: post #17

Maybe because i'm a noob on telephony dev. but what's a "soft phone"...does that mean that the humans who receive the calls don't actually use traditional phones (like landlines or mobile phones), but rather via their web browsers? Silly question: but if i didn't want my folks to use web browsers, and simply wanted to route a call to whomever is on call (and that person works remote, let's say), I wonder if possible…

Presumably, it is designed for larger customer support requirements, where you have a call center team taking many calls one after the other. It doesn't seem worth it to take occasional support calls.

Re: Amazon Connect – Simple to use, cloud-based contact center

#26

Post by mxuribe »

beejiu wrote: post #25
mxuribe wrote: post #17

Maybe because i'm a noob on telephony dev. but what's a "soft phone"...does that mean that the humans who receive the calls don't actually use traditional phones (like landlines or mobile phones), but rather via their web browsers? Silly question: but if i didn't want my folks to use web browsers, and simply wanted to route a call to whomever is on call (and that person works remote, let's say), I wonder if possible…

Presumably, it is designed for larger customer support requirements, where you have a call center team taking many calls one after the other. It doesn't seem worth it to take occasional support calls.

Thanks, it just wasn't as clear from all the product literature.

Re: Amazon Connect – Simple to use, cloud-based contact center

#27

Post by mxuribe »

tclancy wrote: post #22
mxuribe wrote: post #17

Maybe because i'm a noob on telephony dev. but what's a "soft phone"...does that mean that the humans who receive the calls don't actually use traditional phones (like landlines or mobile phones), but rather via their web browsers? Silly question: but if i didn't want my folks to use web browsers, and simply wanted to route a call to whomever is on call (and that person works remote, let's say), I wonder if possible…

Yes, that's basically the idea, a phone number that doesn't belong to a physical device but can be reassigned as needed/ on a schedule.

Thanks. It seems - based on other comments - that this is likely a service for bigger customers, so i would guess those customers know what these terms mean.

Re: Amazon Connect – Simple to use, cloud-based contact center

#28

Post by calvinbhai »

While Americans are worried about jobs lost due to H1b, outsourcing or offshoring, such automation will be the real job steeler. It even steels the outsourced job back to US!

Curious to see the effect of Amazon Connect on call centers in US and around the world.

Re: Amazon Connect – Simple to use, cloud-based contact center

#29

Post by patrickg_zill »

They are making money at multiple points:

1. Charging you per-minute for use of the service.

2. Charging you a per-DID fee per day of use. Why? You are already paying for the service, and for the VOIP termination. BTW at Amazon scale, the DID numbers are either free or less than 10 cents/month per DID.

3. Charging you (in the USA at least) for the actual VOIP calling.

With 1) and 3), a USA call costs you 0.0048 cents per minute on inbound. Under usual circumstances, inbound calls to USA numbers are free.

They will also (should you request it) record the calls and store them in S3...

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