6 Tips for Scaling Contact Center Operations

Amazon Connect and ConnectPath optimize operations while offering a superior level of customer service

 

To succeed, contact centers must efficiently scale operations. Having agents and technology to offer the best customer experience is also required. Efficient scaling optimizes costs, increases employee satisfaction, and offers real-time insights, overall performance.

The most effective and efficient scaling tools around are Amazon Web Services’ (AWS) Amazon Connect combined with ConnectPath from CloudHesive. Connect provides an AI-powered contact center, and ConnectPath brings the juice: a next-generation, Connect-powered, fully-featured contact center as a service platform.

In this article, we’ll introduce six tips to meet the challenges of scaling contact centers, including: 

• The benefits of Connect
• Automation with artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) 
• Staff schedule optimization
• The role of continuous training
• The boost you get from real-time monitoring to ensure quality and compliance.

Let’s begin!

Tip #1 – Leverage cloud-based solutions

Amazon Connect is used by almost 3,000 companies worldwide, and for good reason. Its wide array of features helps your business stay ahead of evolving customer expectations by scaling easily, efficiently, and endlessly. 

• Scale up or down based on business needs, even if it’s temporary. Amazon Connect automatically adjusts to handle the load during sudden call volume surges or peak times.
• Optimize contact flows. Dynamic contact flow management means you can define a stellar customer experience by determining how calls and interactions are routed and handled.
• Integrate with other services. Amazon Connect seamlessly integrates with other AWS and third-party services, offering a wide range of options to enhance your contact center capabilities.
• Leverage intelligent routing and voice analytics to efficiently distribute customer calls to the right agents based on skills, availability, and other criteria you set. Built-in voice analytics use AI to analyze conversations and provide continuous improvement.

Tip #2 – Automate with AI and ML

Amazon Connect provides robust support of AI and ML to automate responses and efficiently route calls. By integrating AI tools, you can improve both the efficiency and scalability of your contact center operations. Some of the AI tools that can be integrated with Connect include:

• Amazon Lex is a service for building conversational interfaces to provide chatbot capabilities. It uses natural language understanding with customer queries to provide automated responses. By integrating Lex with Amazon Connect, businesses can automate routine inquiries, such as FAQs, and route complex inquiries to human agents.
• Amazon Polly is a text-to-speech service that converts written text into lifelike speech. When integrated with Amazon Connect, Polly can automate the generation of speech-based responses to callers based on pre-configured scripts. This ensures consistent and personalized customer communications while reducing agent workload for simple informational requests.
• Amazon Transcribe is an automatic speech recognition service that converts spoken language into written text. By integrating Transcribe with Amazon Connect, call recordings can be transcribed in real-time or post-call, enabling you to analyze customer conversations for sentiment analysis, call categorization, or to generate insights for improving the customer experience.
• Amazon Comprehend is a natural language processing service that extracts insights and patterns from unstructured text. Integrated with Amazon Connect, Comprehend analyzes chat transcripts, emails, and social media interactions to identify customer sentiment, key topics, and intent. 
• Amazon Rekognition is an ML-powered computer vision service that analyzes images and videos to identify objects, people, text, and activities. By leveraging these AI tools, businesses can automate responses, analyze customer conversations, and identify patterns to improve efficiency and scalability. 

Tip #3 – Optimize scheduling

Amazon Connect provides data analytics through integration with Amazon Connect Streams. You can collect and analyze real-time data about call volume trends to forecast future call volumes.

• Analyze historical call volume data to identify patterns and trends. Examining high-volume periods develops insights into call volumes for future similar periods to optimize staff schedules.
• Real-time data means monitoring call volume trends as they happen. Keep a close eye on those trends to proactively adjust agent schedules.
• Forecasting models can be created based on historical data for ML algorithms. Leveraging these models allows for more accurate predictions about future call volumes. 

Tip #4 – Supercharge training with cloud resources

Continuous training plays a crucial role in contact center operations – it helps employees stay updated on the latest technology and practices. It’s an investment in your staff to navigate the ever-evolving landscape of business and customer expectations. AWS training and certification programs keep staff up-to-date by:

1. Identifying training needs by assessing the specific training needs of your staff based on their roles and responsibilities.
2. Choosing the right training path. AWS offers a range of training paths, such as developer, architect, operations, and security. Choose the appropriate path based on your staff’s job roles and the skills they need to develop.
3. Encouraging Certification. AWS certifications validate expertise and proficiency in specific AWS technologies. Encourage your staff to pursue relevant certifications based on their roles and career aspirations.
4. Fostering a culture of continuous learning within your organization. Encourage employees to explore additional training resources, attend webinars, and participate in AWS community events to stay updated.

Tip #5 – Monitor in real time and make adjustments

Amazon Connect offers real-time monitoring of contact center activities through its comprehensive monitoring and reporting features. With Amazon Connect, supervisors can have real-time visibility into metrics such as the number of calls in queue, average wait time, and agent availability. 

• The real-time monitoring dashboard provides a live view of these metrics, allowing supervisors to track the performance of their contact center in real-time. They can see which agents are currently on calls, which agents are available, and the current status of each call.
• Historical reporting capabilities mean supervisors can generate reports that analyze performance over a specific period to identify trends, patterns, and areas for improvement.
• Supervisors can make data-driven decisions to improve customer service and operational efficiency. For example, if there is a spike in call volume, staffing levels can be adjusted to ensure that customers’ needs are met without excessive wait times. Agents who may need additional training or support are easily identified.

Supervisors can use the real-time data to refine call routing strategies. For instance, if there is a high volume of calls related to a specific issue, the IVR menu options can be adjusted or targeted queues can be created to route those calls more efficiently. This ensures that the right agents with the appropriate skills handle the specific inquiries.

Tip #6 – Ensure quality and compliance

Maintaining quality and compliance in a scaling contact center is crucial. Amazon Connect’s compliance features can assist in meeting industry standards as the contact center expands. Assess your compliance requirements, understand the standards, and enable security and encryption.

Configure compliance features. Set up call recording, transcription, sentiment analysis, and other compliance-related features within Amazon Connect’s management console. Customize settings based on your industry requirements.

Keep up with industry changes and regulatory requirements to ensure ongoing compliance. Amazon Connect’s compliance features are regularly updated to align with evolving standards, so remain aware of any improvements or new features released by AWS.

• Maintaining quality ensures consistent and satisfactory customer experiences. 
• Regulatory requirements. Different industries have specific regulations and compliance standards. Amazon Connect’s compliance features enable adherence to these standards, avoiding penalties and legal issues.
• Configure compliance features. Set up call recording, transcription, sentiment analysis, and other compliance-related features within Amazon Connect’s management console. Customize settings based on your requirements.
• Data security and privacy: Contact centers handle sensitive customer data, making data security and privacy a significant concern. Amazon Connect facilitates compliance with security frameworks such as ISO 27001, SOC 2, and SOC 3, and provides tools like encryption, access control, and secure cloud storage to protect customer information.
• Real-time monitoring and reporting ensure that compliance standards are continuously met. Features like call recording, transcriptions, and sentiment analysis, enable supervisors to observe agent performance and identify areas for improvement quickly.

Amazon Connect Services and ConnectPath Make Scaling Easy

In the future, AI and ML-powered platforms will grow and expand capabilities. Be on the cutting edge today with Amazon Connect and ConnectPath.

Using cloud-based solutions, automation, AI, and ML, along with optimized staff scheduling, training, and monitoring in real-time, makes scaling easier. ConnectPath, powered by Amazon Connect is a scalable solution that can be globally deployed in minutes. You get omnichannel support with manageability in a platform that fosters team collaboration.

Scaling contact center operations can be a daunting task, but partnering with CloudHesive gives you expert guidance. 

With Amazon Connect and ConnectPath, you can optimize your contact center through everything from unexpected surges to holiday promotions. We’re a cloud solutions consulting and managed service provider with expertise in all things Amazon Web Services. We have eight AWS Competencies, more than 50 AWS Certifications, and membership in nine Partner Programs. We have the knowledge and experience to help your business realize all the benefits of AWS cloud, AWS customer service solutions, and Amazon Risk Detection.

We’ve helped over 100 companies reduce operating costs and increase productivity with our focus on security, reliability, availability, and scalability. With more than 30 years of experience, we leverage cloud-based technology to its full potential. Contact the CloudHesive team today for the best in the industry.