For users of AWS' Amazon Connect contact center services, segmentation tools added in the most recent update can enable close collaboration with marketing teams for outreach and upsells.
Generative AI Segmentation, a suite of features in Connect introduced at re:Invent, enables CX leadership to discover segments and personalize pitches by searching customer data or letting the GenAI discover patterns and trends. The tools estimate audience size and include help supported by -- of course -- GenAI summaries.
Combined with the existing Amazon Connect Customer Profiles feature suite, the contact center as a service (CCaaS) does overlap in functionality with customer data platforms (CDPs) deployed in tandem with marketing automation tools.
But both Liz Miller, an analyst at Constellation Research, and Michael Wallace, Americas solutions architecture leader for customer experience at AWS, said AWS isn't encroaching on marketing teams. Instead, it's making customer data more useful in the CX stream and fostering collaboration between marketing and service.
Many CCaaS vendors have added rudimentary marketing tools, including Genesys and Five9. Miller said both AWS and 8x8 go the extra mile to say that such features are not there to replace a CDP and other marketing automation tools the marketing staff uses, but to complement them. Such contact center tools push marketers and other leaders across CX strategy to rethink applications -- such as CDPs -- as a marketing-only tool for marketing data and marketing campaigns when, instead, they should be used throughout the organization.
Customer service data also presents an opportunity for marketers, she said.
"For a very long time, CMOs have had the inkling that there is a really robust and valuable source of customer truth data out there in the enterprise, and that the contact center is likely where that data exists -- that's the front line of a customer experience strategy," Miller said. "But for a long time, we have misused and misunderstood that resource, considered it only valuable as part of our customer satisfaction loop."
"CDPs can do a lot of different things we're not necessarily interested in doing right now," Wallace said. "The whole idea of the [Amazon Connect] profile is the information that matters to my customer experience, to my agents, to my managers. I just want the key information -- maybe just order and contact history -- and I don't need anything else. I don't need credit card numbers. I don't need, you know, all the things that might be stored in a CDP."
Amazon Connect now features marketing automation-like generative AI segmentation tools; one of them suggests segments on its own.
IVR, Q in Connect upgrade
In other news, AWS updated its Q in Connect customer service agent with custom guardrails to control response generation for particular topics, as well as management tools to monitor Q's responses and intent detection -- and to protect customer data for regulatory compliance. Furthermore, Q in Connect has integration with chat and interactive voice response (IVR) channels.
The latter enables Amazon Connect users to switch on generative AI IVR, potentially replacing rules-based "press 1 for sales, press 2 for service" menu trees. Such interfaces often frustrate customers calling contact centers, who might already be frustrated because they're having a problem with a product or service.
Miller said that while GenAI can do a lot to route calls more quickly and sometimes even provide self-service answers, users need to carefully plan AI training and make sure the data it feeds into the models is clean and up to date. Otherwise, it might be even more frustrating for customers.
Speech science is a science. It does require work to get it right.
Michael WallaceAmericas solutions architecture leader for CX, AWS
Early attempts at natural language IVR systems a few years ago failed because vendors and companies rushed them into production during the pandemic, Wallace said. When employees suddenly couldn't work in the office, the AI IVRs flopped so badly that there was a public backlash against them.
"Speech science is a science. It does require work to get it right," Wallace said. "Generative AI can take those statements that normally would choke up a [traditional] IVR and fix it. ... We see a lot of activity around generative AI IVR because that's usually where [traditional] IVRs fail. We try to talk to [traditional IVRs] like a human, and we find out that they're very much not."
Also included in the latest Amazon Connect release are tools to process credit card data over chat channels, as well as a deep integration with WhatsApp, a messaging app popular in Latin America and other regions.
Don Fluckinger is a senior news writer for TechTarget Editorial. He covers customer experience, digital experience management and end-user computing. Got a tip? Email him.
