Amazon introduced its cloud-based contact center offering on Tuesday, Amazon Connect. While the service space could disrupt the market, Amazon must engage the channel for custom integration, support and management, partners said.
Amazon’s new cloud-based contact center, Amazon Connect, is a self-service offering that ties into Amazon’s other storage and compute products and can scale on demand. And that’s both a blessing and a curse, partners said.
„I think the big companies always make it seem so easy, but the reality is, most people don’t know how to set up or manage a contact center. “ Don Gulling, president of Verteks Consulting, an Ocala, Fla.-based solution provider. „This could be a good channel opportunity because I can’t imagine a real-world contact center with more than just a few people who would be able totally self-service the contact center. “
While Amazon Connect could shake up the contact center space, it’s still underdeveloped compared to industry-leading contact center products. Partners said the Internet giant also needs to engage the channel with this service because many businesses today are relying on VARs to manage their contact centers.
[Related: AWS Enters The Contact Center Customer Service Arena With Amazon Connect ]
Amazon said that Connect users who need help with custom integration could work with partners in the AWS Partner Network, calling out several partners, including Accenture, Aria Solutions, Persistent Systems, and Wipro.
„Even though its intuitive and there’s no coding, there’s still always the need for custom development and tying apps to the service,“ said Joe Rittenhouse, president of business development and managing partner for Converged Technology Professionals, a Crystal Lake, Ill.-based solution provider. „[Amazon Connect] sounds like it has the potential to be very robust and disruptive. “
How disruptive? The business model for Amazon Connect is what you’d expect to see in an on-demand world. The service can be spun up in „minutes“ using the AWS Management Console, according to the company. Users will pay for Amazon Connect usage by the minute, plus any associated telephony services.
The real value, said Verteks‘ Gulling, is that Amazon Connect can link to other Amazon services, including DynamoDB, Redshift, and Amazon S3. Amazon Connect also can be connected to third-party CRM tools from the likes of Appian, Calabrio, and Twilio.
„That’s intriguing because it lets businesses use Amazon’s storage and database, so I could see the potential is being up to scale up contact centers rapidly – like if you are an insurance company dealing with an influx of claims post-hurricane, but you don’t need dedicated call center capacity for 1,000 agents all the time,“ Gulling said.
World-class contact centers are highly personalized, meaning a user can reach a live person that can quickly address a customer’s needs. That’s not the usual customer service approach used by webscale companies such as Amazon, Google, and Facebook, said Gary Berzack, CTO and COO of New York-based solution provider eTribeca.
„For the likes of those companies, customer service tends to be, at all costs, ‚do not speak to the end user.‘ After all, does anyone know Facebook’s phone number? “ Berzack said.
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