First impressions are everything.

When you visit the Amazon Connect services page, you’ll see this:

Amazon Connect is an “omnichannel cloud contact center that helps you provide superior customer service at a lower cost.”

In less than a sentence (a fragment really), we get a quick description of what Amazon Connect is: a contact center that works on multiple channels, or across EVERY channel you have.” And we get a big plus: it’s going to cost you far less than other omnichannel centers.

In this article, we identify the primary features you find in a Contact Center Solution.

Cloud-Based Call Center Features Explained

Telephony

Telephony is a phone system that doesn’t need wires and poles. It works by using switches on the Internet and is available to customer support agents via a web browser and/or mobile device application.

With telephony, you pay for the data you use for the calls you place or receive. There are no setup charges or monthly usage fees, and you usually won’t need a contract either. 

Typically with Amazon Connect (the most robust cloud-based call center system), businesses that assist 5,000 to 10,000 customers across multi-channels spend $150 to $500 per month for telephony. Costs only go higher if your technical support traffic increases. Amazon Connect pricing is based solely on how much bandwidth you use (either through chat, phone calls, or email), the number of tasks you use, and the volume of user profiles you store in the cloud.

Amazon Connect Softphone is an example of telephony technology. It extends the capabilities of Amazon Connect by adding a softphone (which is available to agents even when they close their web browser and the cloud software dashboard).

Omnichannel Outbound Campaigns

In the old days, a customer support representative had to ask a customer to call them or communicate with them on a specific channel. For example over the phone only or perhaps only by email.

That’s so 2002.

A cloud-based customer call center provides access to “omnichannel” outbound campaigns. With this, a company is able to message contacts via multiple communication platforms: utilize voice calls, SMS, web chat, social chat, or managing emails to respond to customer concerns and ensure customer satisfaction, or even anticipate them.

What’s better than solving a customer issue? Cutting off that issue before it even arises.

Predictive Dialer

What is a predictive dialer? 

No, it doesn’t have anything to do with Nostradamus. 

A predictive dialer dials a list of telephone numbers, attempting to reach customers and routing them to available agents. How can this be used by your company?

This is cool – you can dial a list of customers with open issues in your call center or call back customers that you couldn’t reach previously. You can even call customers who fit a profile that matches others who have purchased the same product. 

With a proficient customer support phone system like the one central to Amazon Connect in the AWS (Amazon Web Services) suite, you can leverage all that’s good about the cloud-based call center. Customer care, indeed.

Web Chat, Mobile Chat

Those were the days when the only way you could field customer concerns was if the customer dragged themselves into your butcher shop and told you the mutton was too tough. 

Remember mutton? Remember butcher shops?

Well, today your customers have a slew of ways to contact you. (Don’t they? If not, you better fix that).

As of 2022, nearly 60 percent of all web traffic takes place on a mobile device. Which means you better have a way for people to reach you on their phones via a browser, for example. With web chat enabled for mobile, you can.

New knowledge base advancements like the proliferation of service channels, analytics, automation, and AI, rather than replacing email, have only contributed to strengthening email’s basic function in customer care. It’s important to research carefully so you can find the best call center email management software.

An agent can receive a “call” from a web chat message with the amazon phone system just like it was a phone call or email. Once they enter into a conversation with the customer, all communication is saved and can be attached to that customer’s contact in your cloud-based call center or also known as a cloud-hosted call center. Your support team can refer to it later, or even send it to the customer for reference.

Because live chat is conversational, it’s more engaging and satisfying to the customer than email. It also allows you to manage customers more efficiently and quickly than phone calls because you can serve chats to an agent instantly (no ring ring ring or button pushing required). You can even create rules to funnel chats or shared inboxes to the agent with the best expertise for that subject.  

Dynamic Omnichannel Routing

With cloud-based customer service systems like the systems Pentwater Connect provides, you can connect support services traffic dynamically, even putting it off into multiple channels when needed.

Think of omnichannel routing like the switch operator on the railroad: you’re sending the customer support traffic to the right track so it flows smoothly. Except, it’s far quicker and uses technology that gives your business powerful customer communication. 

Imagine sending a customer to live web chat with the agent available immediately, rather than emailing them back and requiring many ping-pong emails to resolve an issue. Or identify certain types of problems and automatically route them to the chosen channel or channels for resolution.

And as always, this type of automation is based on rules you define, and on the unique parameters of your staff and your business.

Task Management

Any customer call center needs a feature to allow for task management. For example:

• See the status of all open issues
• Organize issues by type or agent or product category (anything you define)
• See email communication in one place, threaded by customers and concerns

Using robust analytics tools, such as visualization, to make business decisions with real-time and historical analytics, you can increase performance and cut expenses.

Call Center Automation

The call center software cloud is the future of CX (customer experiences). Except it’s here now: with tools like Amazon Connect, any business can boost a premiere contact center software.. 

Automation of your call center tasks is when you use your business rules (see below) to unfurl the beauty of Amazon Connect, a powerful cloud-based call center with the features you need to satisfy your customers. No need to use the Is there an Amazon Connect Download for your connect support services needs because it already utilizes natural language chatbots, Interactive Voice Response (IVR), and automated customer voice authentication.

Business Rules

All the best tools are useless if you don’t have a process for using them. That’s where business rules come in. You define business rules to unleash the power of your cloud-based call center and enable customer journeys. With your rules, you define how your team members or agents interact with the software cloud. 

More importantly, business rules establish how your business interacts with customers and potential customers. That communication is important for the growth of your company.

What is a business rule, actually? Great question. Here are a few examples of business rules for customer service:

• Which types of customer problems are assigned to management or senior customer support agents?
• What types of metadata a customer support agent must record for every interaction with a customer.
• Defining how many chat messages can be exchanged before a customer interaction must be elevated to another channel.

Customers still rely on email to manage communications through email support software with brands and businesses. Your business rules guide process flow. They clearly define your method of organizing, tracking, and satisfying customer issues or questions.

Many businesses publish their business rules in a document that is disseminated to agents to assist with performing tasks. Contact Pentwater Connect for information about the Amazon Connect omnichannel support systems hosted in the cloud. We provide a free first consultation of your business needs for customer care.