Boosting Agent Productivity with Amazon Connect
Many organizations still default to reactive customer service despite its drawbacks. Surprisingly, Gartner research shows only 13% of customers experience proactive service. This gap becomes more significant as customer experience now trumps price and product as the key brand differentiator.
A shift to proactive customer service isn’t just beneficial; it’s essential for enhancing customer experience and satisfaction. Proactive service equips agents with the necessary information to offer quick, effective service, often anticipating customer needs. This approach is seen in healthcare reminders for appointments or utility companies alerting customers about weather changes.
Boost Agent Productivity with Proactive Customer Service
Proactive customer service isn’t only about pleasing customers; it significantly boosts contact center agent productivity. Agents who are well-prepared to handle customer issues can resolve them more efficiently, reducing the need for transfers and repetitive inquiries. According to the Gartner Predictions for 2023, 63% of service leaders say that improving their operational excellence is their #1 priority. The key factor to achieving this goal is by adopting the latest agent productivity improvements.
Amazon Connect and USAN – Pioneering Proactive Service
Amazon Connect, the cloud contact center platform from AWS, and USAN’s native applications that extend the functionality of Amazon Connect were designed with proactive service in mind.
Here are six ways these solutions enable proactive service, overcome challenges faced by contact center agents, and increase agent productivity:
- Proficiency Based Routing in Amazon Connect
When interactions are routed to only a general queue, an agent with shipping expertise might receive a call about a warranty. A good agent will still be able to handle the call, but it will be more challenging and will, therefore, take longer to meet the customer’s needs. Typical skills-based routing is often static and routes interactions to a specific skilled agent regardless of the context.
With the recent launch of Proficiency Based Routing (PBR) by Amazon Connect at re:Invent 2023 businesses can create custom routing requirements so that each customer contact is matched to the available agent best able to drive the desired business outcome. Customers are already leveraging this by incorporating outcome based strategies such as propensity to buy, customer retention routing, etc,.
- USAN Agent Desktop
Agent Desktop provides a complete view of a customer’s interaction history to maximize productivity and provide quality, proactive service. Without this information, agents have no choice but to start at square one in their efforts to diagnose problems and offer solutions. This repetition is frustrating for the customer and hamstrings agent productivity while increasing the overall cost of customer service.
With a comprehensive view of customer interaction history, agents can offer proactive, high-quality service without redundant efforts.
We continually improve by incorporating the latest improvements to agent productivity launches from Amazon Connect such as Step-by-step guides, which can now provide prescriptive step-by-step guidance to agents based on their interactive voice response (IVR) interactions and customer data. You can create a continuum to the self-service IVR applications by providing the agents with the ‘Next Best Action’ so they can quickly address the customer needs.
- Voice Authentication in Amazon Connect
Instead of having customers answer a variety of verification questions, voice authentication streamlines the identity process by allowing customers to create their voiceprint. Voice ID uses machine learning to seamlessly authenticate customers by analyzing each caller’s unique voice characteristics, including tone, rhythm, pitch, and volume. This digital voiceprint is an additional layer of security that improves agent productivity by removing the need for manual authentication.
Leverage voice ID technology for efficient customer verification, enhanced security, and time saved on manual authentication processes.
- Amazon Q in Connect
It’s impossible to train for every challenge faced by contact center agents. While the most experienced agents may have all the right answers, they also make up a minority of any service team. Amazon Connect Wisdom, however, allows agents to search for answers across multiple repositories, including FAQs, wikis, and knowledgebase articles. This gives agents the information they need to address situations outside their comfort zone. When agents can search using simple, intuitive phrases like “How long after purchase will warranty last?” they can deliver faster, better service.
With the launch of Amazon Q in Connect a generative AI assistant, which includes functionality formerly available as Amazon Connect Wisdom, can help agents detect customer intent during calls and chats using conversational analytics and natural language understanding (NLU), then provides agents with generated responses and suggested actions, along with links to relevant documents and articles.
- Amazon Connect Tasks
After a customer service call has concluded, the work isn’t necessarily finished. When companies rely on various tools, agents might have to take manual notes and perform post-call work in separate systems. Amazon Connect Tasks eliminates this redundancy by prioritizing, assigning, tracking, and automating post-call work across disparate systems. The tool also offers prebuilt integrations with CRM applications, and APIs provide additional integrations as needed.
Streamline post-call tasks by integrating and automating processes across different systems, boosting efficiency and productivity.
- USAN Dialer for Amazon Connect
Finally, USAN Dialer improves contact center agent productivity by removing the need for agents to manually dial and allowing them to preview a contact’s attributes. The tool can combine inbound calls with automated outbound call campaigns using the same agents, creating a blended service environment.
You can enhance productivity by automating dialing processes and allowing for a blended service environment with inbound and outbound call management.
Reactive customer service models are no longer sufficient in today’s customer-centric world. By leveraging the advanced capabilities of Amazon Connect and USAN Realm, businesses can shift to a proactive service model, ensuring enhanced customer satisfaction and improved agent productivity and overall business efficiency.
To learn more about how Amazon Connect and USAN Contact Suite can bolster your organization’s customer service, get in touch today.