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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

#31
post #27
post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

[deleted]

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

#32
I built a Five9 instance from the ground up in support of a ~20 person customer service center several years ago.

Switching costs, even for that little 20 person shop, would be insanely high to move to Amazon between training reps, rebuilding custom reporting, recreating workflows, DID switching, etc.

And Five9 matches several of the amazon features - cloud based, minimal contracts (month to month at last check), decent API integration support, object-oriented set-up UX, etc.

I am excited about Amazon's entry in this space to push everybody forward, but I think they're going to make more impact forward than penetrate existing organizations.

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

#33
post #5

This feels a lot like Amazon's ecommerce activities. Since Amazon own the platform in ecommerce, they can detect which goods are most successfully sold, sell those goods themselves, and use their scale and distribution to muscle out competitors. Now since Amazon owns the cloud infrastructure, they can detect which apps are among the most successful (e.g. customer service apps) and build only winners. Again, they can…

You seem to assume that they have bad intentions. They are just increasing the number of value-add services they offer. They aren't necessarily trying to muscle out competitors, competition in the marketplace is ultimately great for the consumer.

I wouldn't call it bad intentions. I'd call it being opportunistic or having unaligned incentives.

When you own the platform and discovery features (i.e. search), you can create an environment in which your products could be on average more successful than 3rd party products.

The calculation to build your own products is probably "is the total value of having a given category of 3rd party products on my service worth more or less than if I build that category of products myself and sell directly to customers?"

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

#34
post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Twilio did a presentation at re:Invent last year talking about how they power AWS SMS messages.

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

#36
post #8
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 entered into an agreement with Amazon to power their telephony services. I wouldn't be surprised if this was built in collaboration as they'd benefit from the volume. http://www.businessinsider.com/twilio-amazon-web-services-pa...

It is in fact built on twilio: https://investors.twilio.com/news/all-news/press-release-det...

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

#37
post #21
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...

It is

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

#38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

and great for amazon. They make more on AWS that way.

This is correct. A lot of people don't realize that Amazon actually makes more money from Marketplace (3rd party sellers) than they do with their "Sold by Amazon" products.

It may be context dependent: today they have many high value uses for capital, better than using it for filling a warehouse, but in the future ,this could be different.

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

#39
post #32

I built a Five9 instance from the ground up in support of a ~20 person customer service center several years ago. Switching costs, even for that little 20 person shop, would be insanely high to move to Amazon between training reps, rebuilding custom reporting, recreating workflows, DID switching, etc. And Five9 matches several of the amazon features - cloud based, minimal contracts (month to month at last check), dec…

This has been mostly true for any new business or technology. The "hockey stick" growth point often occurs when it becomes more difficult for existing businesses not to use it.

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

#40

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…

Is this pricing that unusual? Almost all the other products I've looked into had pricing plans where you pay a per user license, plus the cost of a DID and usage. A couple offered just per user license, but when you did the math you could have people to be on the phone for 10 hours a day before you started saving vs per minute prices
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