Amazon in the Cloud

AWS is heading to the Cloud

In March of this year (2017) Amazon announced a new Cloud based contact center offer that is based on their internal “home grown” contact center operations platform.

Amazon Connect is a self-service, cloud-based contact center service that makes it easy for a business to deliver better customer service at lower cost – so says their web site. Amazon Connect is based on the same contact center technology used by Amazon customer service associates around the world to power millions of customer conversations. The self-service graphical interface in Amazon Connect makes it easy for non-technical users to design contact flows, manage agents, and track performance metrics – no specialized skills required per Amazon’s web site. There are no up-front payments or long-term commitments and no infrastructure to manage with Amazon Connect; customers pay by the minute for Amazon Connect usage plus any associated telephony services.

Pricing

Amazon Connect is a pay-as-you-go service. There are no required up-front payments, long-term commitments or minimum monthly fees. You pay by the minute for Amazon Connect usage plus any associated telephony services. Amazon Connect usage is determined by the minutes your end-customer is connected to the service. For telephony, you will select a direct inward dial (DID) phone number or toll-free phone number, and additional numbers can be added later. DID and toll-free phone numbers are charged on a per day basis, and there is a per minute charge for any calls based on the type of phone number for inbound calls, and the destination of outbound calls.

Amazon Connect offers DID and toll-free numbers in the US and 18 countries throughout Europe. Taxes, surcharges and fees may also apply.

The service is new and it is unclear of the AWS adoption rate but this is an interesting offer to say the least. And a sign that more and more things are moving to the Cloud!