Use Case
As Cloudwave grows as a business we decided to update our own Amazon Connect Call Centre with a virtual receptionist. We wanted it to show off the capabilities of not only Amazon Connect but also how Connect can integrate with other Amazon Services such as Amazon Lex. The scope of what we wanted to achieve is as follows.
A customer dials in to the call centre number and if they know the name of the person that they wish to speak with they are prompted to say their name.
If they do not know to whom they wish to speak they can say “Sales” or “Support” and they will be transferred there instead.
If our Virtual Receptionist does not understand the user voice input she will ask to repeat the name again 2 more times.
If the input is still not understood the caller will be transferred to another number.
Amazon Lex
Setting up our Amazon Lex Bot
Below is a Bot I set up that will be invoked from Amazon Connect and the important parts noted below. I have 7 intents set up that will be used. For this example I will just concentrate on the one for myself
Intent name is “sheehy_transfer”
You can see it’s slot type is “Name”
I have several sample utterances such as “mike sheehy”, “mick sheehy”, “michael sheehy” or “sheehy” so if the caller says any of these the call will be transferred to me.
Slots
The slots define the data that a customer must provide to fulfill the intent. In this case, the Name is “sheehy” and the slot type is “Name”
Message
If any of these utterances are recognized the customer will be greeted with the message “Transferring you now to Michael Sheehy”
Error Handling
If our virtual receptionist does not recognize any of the utterances from the customer who has dialed in the following will happen.
She will say ” Sorry, can you please repeat that?”
This will be retried twice after the initial prompt if it fails.
If she stills fails to understand she says “I do not understand. I will transfer you now to one of our friendly staff.” and the call will be transferred to another number
Amazon Connect
Incorporating Lex into Connect
Before you can invoke Amazon Lex from within Connect you need to select it in the call centre set up.
You can see on the 2 screenshots on the right what you need to do.
Select Contact Flows
Select the Lexbot that you previously set up in the Amazon Lex section above
Invoking Lex in Amazon Connect
I will assume if you are reading this you are familiar with Amazon Connect Call Flows. Consequently I will only be concentrating on the Amazon Lex functionality from within Amazon Connect and how you set up your bot within Lex rather than any call flows. The image below shows a section of the call flow that we will be using. The part where Amazon Lex is invoked is highlighted. This is the important part of the flow, called “Get Customer Input” and is where all the decision making goes on and we will go into it deeper in the next section.
Get Customer Input
So if we look into the “Get Customer Input” deeper we see on the right what is needed to invoke Lex .
Select the Amazon Lex Tab
Select the name of the Amazon Lex Bot that you will be using.
Add your intents that you set up in the previously. The one that was shown in the Amazon Lex section above is “sheehy_transfer”. You can however see other intents that are used to transfer to other areas of our business
That's it A few more steps are needed to set up a number and incorporate Lex into your call centre solution. As stated previously this Blog post assumes that some prior knowledge of that process.
Any questions or comments please post in the comments section below.
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Cloudwave are Australia's best cloud contact centre service provider, offering a range of products and professional services to suit all sizes of business including Cloudwave Neon, Twilio Flex, Serenova cxEngage and Amazon Connect. All of which are provided by our team of industry experts driven to provide your business with the right solution to drive internal efficiencies and an incredible customer experience.
