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Amazon Web Services Jumps Into Call-Center Market With New 'Amazon Connect' Service (geekwire.com)

Posted by msmash on from the new-foray dept.

Amazon Web Services just unveiled a new service for running call centers, dubbed Amazon Connect, leveraging the same technology used by Amazon.com's own customer service system to route and manage calls using automatic speech recognition and artificial intelligence. From a report: The announcement is the latest move by the cloud giant beyond its core infrastructure technologies and into higher-level cloud services. Amazon says the service incorporates its Lex technology, an artificial intelligence service for speech recognition and natural language processing, which also powers the company's Alexa virtual assistant. The company says Amazon Connect works with existing AWS services such as DynamoDB, Amazon Redshift, or Amazon Aurora, as well as third-party CRM and analytics services. Salesforce says it's integrating its Service Cloud Einstein with Amazon Connect. It uses a graphical interface to let companies set up a workflow for calls without coding.

20 comments

  1. When you thought call centers were bad enough... by sethstorm · · Score: 4, Funny

    ...someone decides to make them worse.

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    Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
  2. I Do Call Center Work by uncleroot · · Score: 1

    For a cellphone company. And a fairly small percentage of the customers call so often that it bleeds away a lot of the profits. Trying to figure out how to get these people to stop calling so much is a full time job for many thousands of people in my industry. Next solution: Replace me with Siri-like bots. Customers won't like it at first but someone has to pay for me for my time and my benefits and the cost of the call center. AI customer service and sales bots are coming and not that far into the future.

    1. Re:I Do Call Center Work by freeze128 · · Score: 1

      Maybe stop making cellphones with so many problems. I bet the customer service calls will drop off sharply after that.

    2. Re:I Do Call Center Work by Dunbal · · Score: 1

      Trying to figure out how to get these people to stop calling so much is a full time job

      That was figured out in the 80's. Your support line is a 900 number. No more calls.

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      Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
    3. Re:I Do Call Center Work by Dunbal · · Score: 2

      If you're of average intelligence (and yes for argument's sake lets assume that average = median for a moment although I know this is not necessarily true) just consider that half the people in the world are dumber than you. Now imagine what it's like to live on the right side of the Gauss curve. No matter how hard you try to design something that will work for the "average person" there will always be a mind numbing number of complete idiots who will always get it wrong. This is why toothpicks come with instructions. It should be pretty obvious that "DO NOT POKE IN EYE" is part and parcel of normal toothpick operation. But it's not.

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      Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
  3. Not as good as it sounds by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    They just pipe the entire conversation through the emacs psychotherapist.

    Not very technically impressive by any stretch, but at least there will be a marked improvement in the perceived IQ of call centre staff, so that's something,

    1. Re:Not as good as it sounds by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      dr sbaitso???

  4. Not really a call center. by freeze128 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    What Amazon describes isn't really a call center, but an IVR unit (Interactive Voice Response). Even if you buy this service from Amazon, you will still need a call center with actual humans in it answering phones.

    1. Re:Not really a call center. by Dunbal · · Score: 1

      I'm currently wondering how come every call center I call lately seems like I'm calling Mars. Ever called an airline to change a plane ticket? Then you know what I'm talking about. There's no point having a call center if all you can afford is a 4KHz connection and no one can hear each other. Skype or god forbid Teamspeak/Mumble/Discord sound like an audiophile's wet dream compared to say, KLM whom I called recently. I thought Amazon might be trying to solve this, but sadly not. /rant

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      Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
    2. Re:Not really a call center. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I don't think the problem is a 4kHz connection. I believe there are two independent problems:

      1. If the call center is domestic, they use cheap crappy headsets. With each new generation of headsets, the mike quality gets worse, and the placement of the mike, like right by your ear is crazy. (Uh, how many people talk out of their ears?)

      2. If the call center is overseas, they are using VoIP with excessive compression; a dropout causes garbage when decompressed.

      Actually an old-fashioned carbon mike on a 4kHz connection is very very clear, though perhaps not optimal for listening to Aida.

    3. Re:Not really a call center. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      > Even if you buy this service from Amazon, you will still need a call center with actual humans in it answering phones.

      You seem to be assuming that there's an exit point from the IVR that could in theory contact a human. This assumption is not always valid.

    4. Re:Not really a call center. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      a call center with actual humans

      Or simply a herd of indians?

    5. Re:Not really a call center. by freeze128 · · Score: 1

      Then you *STILL* don't have a call center.

    6. Re: Not really a call center. by buchanmilne · · Score: 1

      "What Amazon describes isn't really a call center, but an IVR unit (Interactive Voice Response). Even if you buy this service from Amazon, you will still need a call center with actual humans in it answering phones."

      Amazon specifically provides features for those humans, so they are describing a call centre. You still need the humans, bit you don't need your own contact centre infrastructure.

      "Setting up a cloud-based contact center with Amazon Connect is as easy as a few clicks in the AWS Management Console, and agents can begin taking calls within minutes."

      Yes, other providers have offered hosted contact centres before, but people also offered VPS hosting before AWS launched EC2.

      The features available in AWS connect sound like the ones some companies have been trying to piece together from components delivered by traditional players in the CRM industry but are usually too expensive to actually get right.

      If more companies are enabled to provide the level of support Amazon amamd AWS provide, I thinl thay is a good thing ...

  5. Re:Oh Boy by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    They should build in a Hindi-English translator in the Amazon IVR. Then it could work out better

  6. Re:When you thought call centers were bad enough.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    As a former call center caller, this is welcome. Rather than make unsolicited calls to people and get abused, it's far better that bots handle them, and hand them over to humans in the event of the callee saying yes

    I have worked deploying and maintaining the technology for different Call Centers (or Contact Centers, since many of them handle mail or chat, not only voice calls) what you are talking about is telemarketing, which is only a small part of what Call Centers do, most of the works of Call Centers consists of attending calls from customers for many different reasons, not to make unsolicited calls. Also, this Amazon technology is nothing new, Speech Recogniztion Software has already been implemented and sold by many vendors and it's widely used in many companies since years ago. We will see if Amazon can stablish itself as an actor in a market already quite mature.