The Client!
FMG Suites – is a marketing firm that specializes in the Financial Service community. They assist company’s increase community awareness through a variety of programs that range from website development to social media engagement. FMG has multiple offices through out the country with 5 core centers located in the Wester Region.
The Challenge!
Historically the company operated several different phone systems both hosted and on premise and for reasons that can be summarized as a general dissatisfaction with the performance of the various phone and call center vendors servicing them, FMG committed to change vendors. In January after the usual due diligence the company choose AWS Connect as their call center solution and retained DrVoIP to do the design, deployment and modifications required to meet the needs of over 40 geographically distributed customer service professionals.
Architectural Overview
The architecture uses a single AWS Instance and over 20 DNIS numbers to manage and route incoming calls. The AWS Connect instance is integrated with Salesforce and a newly deployed Ring Central hosted phone system. To accomplish the list of requirements provided by FMG, DrVoIP made use of of a full range of AWS Services that included:
- Lambda
- Dynamodb
- Kenesis Streams
- LEX
- Polly
- Agent Streams
- S3 Buckets
- Cognito
- PintPoint
- SNS
- AWS Connect Salesforce Connector
Core Features Developed with AWS services
Holiday Schedules and Ad-hoc Closings
To create a Holiday list of closing, a DynamoDB table was created. On incoming calls, a Lambda function was launched to check this list to note any holiday closings that might over ride the normal hours or operation. Additionally, a Supervisor is able to close a queue for a team meeting on a scheduled or demand basis. This closing would be checked by a Lambda function similar to the holiday check and would also retrieve the custom prompt created by the supervisor to play to callers during the closing period using Polly text to speech!
“Live Look”
This is a graphical description of the current callers in queue. We use a Lambda function to update this list to both add and remove the caller. A modified “Agent Whisper” step is used to remove the caller from the list when the call is presented to an Agent.
Agent Monitoring and Coaching
FMG required that in addition to the standard AWS Connect feature of allowing a supervisor to monitor a call, DrVoIP had to create a facility to enable the supervisor to “coach” the agent by whispering in the agents ear. This was created using Kenesis media streams and custom “‘sockets” for Agent to Agent calling.
Agent Broadcast
The ability to enable the supervisor to broadcast a text announcement to all Agents was required. This being a non-standard feature of AWS, was created by DrVoIP.
Recording retrieval and playback
Each Agent, granted the permission from a Supervisor was enabled to download and playback their own voice recordings. This non standard AWS feature was created using Media Streams and a custom GUI! Supervisors are enabled to download and playback all recordings. Recordings are stored in S3 buckets.
Option to offer Call Back
Using AWS Contact flows, DrVoIP created a call back option offered to callers waiting for an agent to become available. This option included the ability to turn this option off based on a schedule that is managed by the supervisor of that queue.
Agent to Agent Calling
Generally an Agent can call another agent only when the agent had an active phone call. DrVoIP implemented an option that enables agent to agent calling without requiring an active phone call. All Agents can see the status fo their team mates through a custom Agent dashboard.
Text Notification to “on call” after hours
Using a combination of Lambda, DynamoDB, Pinpoint and SNS callers into the center after hours were offered the option to request a call back from an on call representative. The representative was drawn from the DynamoDB table, contacted via Pinpoint and SNS and provided with the details of the inbound caller using contact flow attributes!
Salesforce Integration
This instance of AWS Connect is integrated with Salesforce using the AWS Second Generation Connector available in the Salesforce Appstore!
Real Time Reporting
Each Agent desktop had a browser based Agent Desktop that shows the status of each Queue that Agent is a member of in addition to a Global tab that shows statistics for all Queues in the deployment.
Historical Reporting
The AWS Connect dashboard has access to a wide variety of “historical reports” that can be configured and then scheduled to be run as required to meet the requirements of the stakeholders. For a detailed list of available reporting elements click here!
Platform Migration Strategy
DrVoIP Recommends a “warm port” strategy when migrating from one platform to another. Warm porting is the use of temporary phone numbers on the AWS Connect instance that are used during the design, deployment, testing and “go live”. This enables us to “call forward” existing DNIS numbers to the appropriate number on the AWS platform. In this way, the old system now becomes a “fall back” option should it become necessary for any reason. Later, a port date is established with the carrier currently handling the DNIS numbers and when that port can be verified the new platform is already in place and this numbers can then be swapped out with no service interruption.
FMG Customer Testimonial
Sean Kennedy IT Manager – DrVoIP and team are very knowledgeable on AWS and specifically in our case the Connect product. Dr VoIP was able to build out a brand new call flow for our main business and several other phone systems that were brought in to the organization though acquisition. DrVoIP and team were able to meet with us, gain understanding of our needs and then able to implement a solution in AWS Connect that exceeded expectations. The cost savings of moving to AWS Connect has been huge and we look forward to a continued relationship with DrVoIP and taking advantage of new features in Connect! Download Contact and other details regarding this case study.