Interactive Voice Response (IVR) has played a pivotal role in customer service for decades, primarily by enabling automatic issue resolution and routing. Traditionally, IVRs were designed to guide callers through pre-recorded menus to help them reach certain departments or get information without needing to speak to a human. The technology helped reduce call volumes by offloading routine enquiries and directing calls efficiently. 

More recently, IVR systems have undergone a major transformation, thanks to advancements in conversational AI. This evolution is shifting IVR from a simple menu-based system to a dynamic, conversational interface that more closely mimics human interaction. This expansion reaches beyond traditional phone systems to meet customers in their channel of choice, such as chat or SMS. Conversational AI has led the charge of this transformation and generative AI is set to supercharge IVR even further – offering an exciting new frontier of IVR experiences. 

Prashant Trehan, Sr. Manager, Product Management, Amazon Connect, Amazon Web Services (AWS) explains: “Interactive Voice Response (IVR) systems have been a staple of customer service for decades, but we’re now witnessing an exciting transformation across all of self-service. By harnessing the power of AI and machine learning, enterprises can elevate their self-service experiences to new heights, delivering more personalized, conversational interactions that delight customers while driving operational efficiencies.”   

Amazon Connect, an AI-powered contact center solution from AWS, offers operational efficiency – and here’s why. 

  1. Easy Setup and Customization

Amazon Connect is designed to be highly user-friendly, even for businesses without extensive technical expertise. A drag-and-drop interface enables organizations to easily create custom IVR flows and configure call routing, helping them quickly set up and adjust their workflows as needs change. 

  1. Native Integration

Amazon Connect is a single, integrated application offering Natural Language Understanding (NLU), Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) and Text to Speech (TTS). This integration enables highly conversational, industry-leading, AI-driven IVR that can understand and respond to customer inquiries in natural language, with support for over 25 global languages. This reduces the need for customers to navigate traditional, menu-based systems. It integrates with Amazon Polly for text-to-speech and other AWS services can be easily integrated as well.   

It can deliver seamless, conversational IVR experiences, offering global scalability and the resilience to handle large call volumes. 

  1. Migration Patterns and Strategies

Amazon Connect is highly adaptable for organizations migrating from legacy systems or incorporating new technologies incrementally. It can accommodate: 

  1. Phased or Gradual Migration – Amazon Connect allows parts of the IVR system to be migrated in stages 
  1. Parallel Operation (Dual-System Integration) – In a parallel migration path, Amazon Connect can operate alongside a legacy contact center system, allowing calls to be routed between systems based on specific conditions. 
  1. Modernize and Optimize Processes – companies can reimagine their self-service experiences across voice, chat, messaging and more with Amazon Connect.  

AWS Partners play a crucial role in accelerating the migration to Amazon Connect IVR by providing expertise, tools, and resources that accelerate the migration process, ensuring that businesses can maximize the benefits of Amazon Connect with minimal disruption. 

Putting the Tech in Action 

Public sector and business customers across all industries have successfully migrated their voice self-service to Amazon Connect from on-premises, hosted managed services, and cloud offerings, while improving key metrics. By leveraging conversational AI to transition from menu-based systems to open-ended questions, companies are reducing IVR navigation time and transfer rates. For example, TransUnion cut IVR time from 2 minutes to 18 seconds and reduced transfer rates by 50%. 

 

Beyond that, Generative AI is powering the next generation of contact center – delivering improved customer experience, efficiency, and personalization. As technology advances, we expect more from generative and future iterations of AI to deliver sophisticated, human-like self-service interactions. 

For example, DoorDash built a generative AI-powered self-service solution using Amazon Connect. The partnership resulted in benefits including: 

  • Handled 100Ks of calls per day through the generative AI self-service solution  
  • Reduced call volumes to live agents by thousands per day  
  • Expanded self-service containment rate and first-contact resolution  
  • Improved Dasher satisfaction and productivity metrics  
  • Freed live agents to focus on higher complexity issues 

 

As AWS’s Trehan concludes: “We’re excited about the potential of generative AI in IVR and customer service. Our approach focuses on structured generative AI, bringing agent insights to self-service while maintaining the observability and guardrails our customers value. This allows for more personalized, intuitive experiences that can understand complex queries and generate dynamic responses, all while ensuring consistency and adherence to business rules. We’re already seeing enterprises leverage this technology to improve self-service containment rates, customer satisfaction, and cost savings.” 

To find out more about Amazon Connect, head to: https://aws.amazon.com/connect/  



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