Perficient’s Delivery Teams use adaptive and responsive consulting to help our clients disrupt the contact center market with Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Amazon Connect. Our company understands that all clients are unique, and each requires a tailored execution path to achieve the best results.
In this article, I will focus on two projects that were executed successfully in two different ways.
A Small and Focused Project
One client, with a small number of agents, desired to extend their customer interaction experience with both live chat and chat-bot assistance. Our team had worked with AWS to pilot chat capabilities and APIs for the AWS conference, and thus we were familiar with the chat tool’s ability to support automated and smart chat responses. We also knew that AWS’ Natural Language Processing (NLP) capabilities rely heavily on data sets.
Because our client did not have any conversation data sets, we helped them understand that it would be easier to set up the chatbot to collect responses and data than to try to address all conversation scenarios. The client informed us that adding chat capability was their most critical business need, so we executed a Kanban delivery structure to tackle the chat implementation priority. We:
- quickly brought up a tracking board that reflected the Kanban states that we desired
- defined small and actionable sets of requirements
- keyed in on Kanban’s focus of completing one item at a time and demonstrating it right away
- received rapid client feedback (thanks to the client’s buy-in with this delivery method)
- attentively listened and responded to feedback, adjusting our features and/or planning later changes
This process made it easy to track the project. Live results and value were on display the day after our testing efforts. Our feedback loop was immediate, and features were checked off and ready to go without being held back by other items. We targeted feature approval within 3 to 5 days from definition to completion.
Using this process, our 2-person team worked with the client’s product team to extend their existing Amazon Connect implementation and release a fully functional chatbot for live use after just over a month of work.
During this execution, we:
- augmented our client’s capabilities using our experienced AWS skillset,
- released their chat capabilities to market quicker through a working partnership,
- enhanced the client’s long-term sustainability through training on how to self-manage and maintain their new chat capabilities.
Large Enterprise Migration
Another client, with a larger number of agents, desired to migrate their enterprise contact center from a legacy on-premise system to an AWS cloud-based system. Their existing system supported:
- many active agents
- many skill-based queues
- many routing definitions, and
- data under very strict security policies.
Through a combined effort of our development team, our partnership with an AWS cloud infrastructure team, and the client’s IT team, we successfully transitioned the client to a cloud-based contact center powered by Amazon Web Services. The effort took roughly 3 months with a 5-person team.
As is often the case with migration projects of this size, our client needed custom enhancements and features that were not immediately available on AWS. Specifically, our client needed the ability to dial to a specific agent (or direct-dial an agent). Using a value-focused Agile execution, we leveraged AWS’ Interactive Voice Response menu to provide the client a similar experience, allowing them to fully retire their legacy contact center.
For more details on how we offer agent dialing capabilities, see here: https://blogs.perficient.com/2021/01/11/direct-inward-dialing-did-for-internal-agent-transfer-with-amazon-connect/
We also integrated with their backend systems and with their CRM (Salesforce). Since our client had limited availability and a tight timeline, we defined an Agile delivery path consisting of multiple enriching increments. We:
- hosted workshop sessions to understand their needs
- assisted with prioritizing their feature sets
- observed a hesitancy to adopt the new platform and thus recommended transitioning in multiple stages
- identified agent segment groups
- defined the necessary features for each agent group
- kept the client updated on progress via demonstrations (held every 2 weeks)
- assisted with training their agents on the new Amazon Connect platform
We identified three value-driven stages for this project, delivered to client expectations on each stage, and continually added improvements. With this delivery structure, we had clear and defined periods of focus time between our product leads and their busy stakeholders. This approach helped with stakeholder buy-in as we respected their busy schedules and executed in a concise and focused manner.
Our teams have quickly and effectively launched Amazon Connect contact centers – from basic pilot deployments, to enhanced deployments with tailored and enriched agent experiences, to full-blown integrated enterprise migrations. We use different delivery paths to accomplish our client’s needs. We flexibly blend teams that are specialized, certified, and always learning, and we work together to deliver functional features using newly released AWS toolsets.
Our focus is on being a reliable and trusted partner, setting and updating expectations immediately, keeping our efforts transparent, and pivoting to the highest value-add items first. If you are interested in learning more about our successful AWS and Amazon Connect experiences, or desire to have us assist you on your AWS transition needs, please reach out to us via our customer engagement and product development page!
