Using Amazon Lex with Amazon Connect

In the last post we looked at the Agent Desktop and how you can use the open framework that Amazon have built Connect on for you to integrate with your own CRM. If you missed it, and the other 3 posts, take a look here:

This time we are going to take a peek into the future, that is available today! Features like these just don't happen in Contact Centres without a significant investment and partnership, aligned business goals and a high functioning IT/Business team. Amazon are again disrupting a market that has been desperately in need of a shift... and this one I feel is a BIGGY! We've all heard of Natural Language Understanding (NLU), Artificial Intelligence (AI) and BOTs (err Robots) but how can we touch them, feel them, experience them and what does it mean for our Customers and our Businesses.

Well... ever heard of Alexa (Other home devices are available :) ) Alexa is built on a product called Lex, Lex "is a service for building conversational interfaces into any application using voice and text" and by any application Amazon also include the big clunky Contact Centres... whoop!! We have a few Alexa Devices in our home, 2 Echo's and a Dot, and from the very first second that I put them in my whole family (1 wife and 4 children, 3-10yrs old) have never stopped using them, and nearly always 2 at a time. They use them to play music (allot!), to check the weather, to ask about appointments, news update, homework, spellings etc. etc... Alexa is like a persona in our house and the whole family can use it... without any training! With this natural UI (or Zero UI some call it) we no longer need or use our phones/iPad in the home to do all the things I just mentioned. All we do is talk to the air and an Alexa somewhere will answer and its nearly always a flawless experience.

Imagine if you could provide this level of experience and customer satisfaction to your own business... your customer can self-serve, in a very natural way and it be a great experience for them... A key element here is the self service part, for almost a decade 'Voice channel is declining', but over the next 12-24 months we are going to see 'Voice UI' or #VoiceFirst hit the mainstream and your customers will want to only interact with you in their home by the way that's most convenient and natural to them.... Speech.

Now that I've bigged this up, I need to deflate us all a little, the Alexa devices cannot call through to Amazon Connect, yet (I'm pretty sure it will happen, it's a case of when) but you can interact with Lex via Phone & Web, and start providing the great user experience in-time for when you can take your product into the home/car via say a smart speaker.

Example time.....

A friend of mine last Friday said..

"Dan, how can we use Amazon Connect to understand more about why our customers are calling"

So i went home and that same evening built the solution and sent them a photo of it working. The solution is very simple and now needs to be tested with more than a couple of people so we can gather more data and can understand more about how it performs.

Solution....

Using Connect, send to a Lex Bot, on Intent match send the calls to the Clients own IVR with the additional reason for calling (1 DDI by Intent) and use the data in Lex to answer my Friends request. Learn and Adapt.

"Welcome to My First AWS Contact Centre, How can I help"

The above welcome message is played by Connect and then sent to the Lex bot below:

This Lex Bot has 3 Intents that I've built (Top left)

• ChangeMyAddress
• GetBalance
• PaymentDueDate

Each intent has a set of 'sample utterances' which as the developer you need to provide to ensure Lex understands the phrases you expect to match to this intent... But this is where AI comes into play... Lex doesn't expect me to provide every single possible combination, instead Amazon voice models do some very clever things and will allow phases that don't match what I've written/said but a human would understand (it's not 100% perfect, but with 1000s of smart people working on this, it will keep improving.. and it's VERY good right now, just like Alexa)

On the bottom right you can see my chat conversation with Lex. My opening sentence is long, that's how we speak, but when we type we typically use 3-4 key search words, Lex understands my intent and is now having a conversation about changing my address. (The back-end of Lex is Lambda, this has my code to drive the conversation, data checking etc.. and update the Database) - I will do a cost comparison in a future post.

What about missed intents....

Amazon have a solution for that too

These are words / phrases that didn't match, what's great is that I can see (the next day) what my customers are asking for and where I'm not providing self service options, this allows me to do a few things. I can click on the checkbox next to the 3 Utterance of recently moved, house move, moved domicile and assign them to the ChangeMyAddress Intent, rebuild the bot (2 mins) and we're then live with higher % of accuracy than before. Or if my customers are asking for something I cannot currently handle with an existing intent, I can add a new intent and build the solution for it.

NLU...

Natural Language Understanding again you get right out of the box... some customers will say "yeah", or "yes", or "ok"... the NLU built into Lex knows what the customer means, this allows for a great conversation with the Bot.

What about Agent desktop and customer journey....

You might recall from last time that we have a prototype Agent Desktop that is fully functional, if in need of a little UI/UX love. Well, I've added the LEX Bot Context to this..... and you can customize the data so that your agents known the Customer is having issues with entering their post_code etc..

Conclusion...

Alexa is a hit... Lex will be a hit... providing your customers with Voice UI that really works well is going to move them away from the Mobile/Web Apps (only when Lex is in the home!)... Its quicker, easier and simpler to speak (for most we need to consider all cases) and with Customer Experience being so front a center of customer advocacy and retention, I would urge you to start exploring your options.

Tidbits:

• Connecting Connect to Lex requires an Alias.. use $LATEST for the latest version.
• Slots / Intents are passed back to Connect from Lex automatically, Session Attributes need to be called out in Lambda (and in both cases you need to update your call flows to save the data to the CTRs

Thanks

Dan