Slowly but surely, Amazon’s AWS cloud computing unit has turn into a serious player within the call/contact center space thanks to its Amazon connection a cloud-based (and AI-centric) contact center service that launched in 2017. Currently, firms similar to Air Canada, Dish Network, and US Bank use this platform to serve customers. During its annual re:Invent conference in Las Vegas, the corporate announced quite a few Connect updates that, unsurprisingly, concentrate on artificial intelligence powered by the Amazon Q platform.

“When we came to market, we were really a voice-only solution that was very much focused on bringing AI to the contact center (with) scalability and security — what our calling card is for AWS. We were able to add more features and become more complete quite quickly,” Pasquale DeMaio, vp and general manager of Amazon Connect at AWS, told me. “We now offer a variety of channels, from chat, email – outgoing mid-call – as well as texting, WhatsApp and Apple Messaging for Business.”

DeMaio emphasized that AWS built Connect as an end-to-end solution that’s now utilized by greater than 14,000 external customers, in addition to Amazon.com itself.

Given the contact center context, many of the recent features concentrate on how Connect customers can more easily create AI-powered self-service workflows that may handle most of the more routine customer support tasks. Originally, AWS used Q in Connect primarily to help agents interact with customers. Now firms also can use this service to create customer-facing self-service.

To be certain that external conversations don’t go off course, AWS allows firms to arrange custom barriers that keep conversations heading in the right direction, reduce hallucinations, and help bots adhere to established company policies.

Ideally, all this permits human agents to concentrate on higher-value and more complex interactions, DeMaio noted. Speaking of those human staff, Connect can also be rolling out recent AI-powered agent evaluation tools that the corporate says will “enable customer service managers to easily detect performance trends, enhance training and improve overall service quality.”

However, what could also be much more interesting – and something you might soon see when a customer calls your call center – is that AWS is trying to use all this data and generative AI to help firms be more proactive of their interactions with customers.

“I think the best customer service is often proactive, not always proactive, but often proactive,” DeMaio said. “Over time it was really missed because it was hard (…) but if it’s done right it can be really great.”

In this version of Connect, the team has created tools that help firms track in real time what is going on with customers (possibly a flight is delayed, a package is stuck in transit, or a subscription is about to renew), divide them into different groups, after which proactively contact them , using essentially the most appropriate channel. Ideally, this may provide higher customer support, but will even reduce the variety of times customers have to contact the corporate, which can likely save the corporate money in the long term.

All of this typically relies on integrating many separate systems with Amazon Q Business. Sometimes it also happens the opposite way around, with external customers incorporating AWS Connect into their contact center solutions. For example, Salesforce today launches “Salesforce Contact Center with Amazon Connect,” which integrated core Amazon Connect capabilities with unified routing with Salesforce’s CRM solution.

“Businesses can now use a single routing and workflow solution for their Amazon Connect and Salesforce channels to intelligently deliver calls, chats, emails, and matters to the appropriate self-service or agent interaction,” AWS explains.

It is value noting that AWS is aware that not every Connect customer is yet ready to use generative AI. “When I talk to customers in the real world who are trying to do this, their number one thing is: stop shoving (generative) AI down my throat for every solution,” DeMaio said. “We want to assist you to go at your personal pace and do it the correct way for your corporation, and have the opportunity to use it for what it’s useful for, but depend on other technologies that already work great. And I’ll say that there are even situations where the tone of touch continues to be nearly as good or higher than voice, similar to should you ask me for my bank card number.