Getting started with Amazon Connect-Introduction (Part 1)
Today, I am going to walk you through starting with Amazon Connect, the initial setup and configuration to get your own omni-channel cloud contact center running.
What is Amazon Connect?
Amazon Connect is an omni-channel cloud contact center service. You can set up a contact center in no time, configure agents, create conversational flows and start engaging with your customers. The above definition is taken from Amazon Connect’s documentation, to read more about connect and its capabilities, you can read through the docs.
What is it used for?
It is used for creating dynamic, personal and natural conversational flows which can be utilized by your customers. It provides a single interface for chat and voice communications for your agents making it convenient for the agents to manage the communication medium easily.
How easy it is to set up a Connect instance?
You can get started with connect in less that 15–20 minutes.
What is a contact flow?
A contact flow aka a conversational flow defines how a customer experiences your contact center from start to finish. Simply put, contact flows enable you to customize your IVR (interactive voice response) system.
First things first, lets create the connect instance itself.
- Navigate to the Amazon Connect console. Click on Add/Create an instance. You will be taken to the screen shown below. Select “Store users in Amazon Connect”, enter an Access URL that is unique, this will be used for accessing your connect instance and then Click on Next.
2. Choose “Specify an administrator”. Fill out all the details like name, username, password and email. Make sure you note down the Username and Password somewhere, so that you can use it later for logging in. Click on Next.
3. Keep the both the telephony options selected and then Click on Next.
4. In my case, I didn’t want any data storage options, so I selected “Customize data storage (advanced)” and deselected all the options. You can keep the default options selected if you want. Click on Next.
5. Review all the configurations that we have made.
6. After review, Click on Create Instance. It will take a couple of minutes to spin up and set up your instance.
7. Click on the instance name that you created and you will be taken to the account overview page. You can login to your instance using 2 options,
a) Log in for emergency access (Use only when needed in case of emergency, not a best practice to use this option)
b) Using Access URL
8. We will be choosing the 2nd option. Open the Access URL in a new tab. Enter your Username and Password, then click on Sign In.
9. You will be taken to the Amazon Connect Dashboard which looks like the one in the image below.
10. In the Connect dashboard, Choose Routing and then click on Contact Flows.
11. You will be taken to the Contact flows page. You will have multiple flows which Amazon Connect has created for you by default. We will be creating a new one. Click on “Create contact flow”.
12. You will be taken to a contact flow designer page which starts with an entry point node.
13. Rename your contact flow by clicking on the edit icon in the top left of the page. Now, from the Interact section, Drag and drop the Play Prompt node into the designer window.
14. Double click on the node and Select the “Text-to-speech or chat text” option and under the Enter text box, enter “Hello World” or any message that you want.
15. Now, from the Terminate/Transfer section, drag and drop the Disconnect node.
16. Click on Save followed by the Publish button to publish your contact flow.
17. From the Navigation menu on the left, Under Routing select Phone numbers.
18. Click on Claim a number button. You can either opt for a Toll free number or a DID number. I chose a toll free number. You can choose any one of them. Choose the Country (USA +1) and select a number from the ones listed by Connect.
19. Scroll down to the bottom of the page and select the Contact flow/IVR that you just created by looking for its name in the drop down menu. After that, Click on Save.
20. Your claimed phone number will be listed down in the Manage phone numbers page and the contact flow it is mapped to.
21. Click on the phone icon in the top right of the screen next to the language setting. It will open a new pop-up window which looks like the one below. This is softphone that Connect provides you with for testing your Contact flows. Change the status of your agent from Offline to Available and then click on Number pad.
22. Dial in the number that you claimed before and Click on Call.
23. The softphone should connect the call and you should hear the prompt that you configured in the Contact flow. In my case, “Hello World”.
That’s it for this blog!
In this blog, we covered connect basic setup, creation of a basic contact flow, claiming a phone number, mapping it with the created contact flow and testing it using Amazon Connect softphone.
Thank you for reading all the way! See you next time! :)
