For the sake of customers, most of the businesses are seeking the opportunities to enhance the performance of their contact centres. This will play a role in making the user experience better and also in increasing the operational efficiency. One approach is to migrate the contact centres to cloud-based using Amazon Connect. Well, now that we have the approach we will be exploring its details like advantages, migration strategies and the challenges while doing so.

What are the Benefits of a Cloud-Based Center?

There might be other cloud-based centres too but our interest merely lies in Amazon Connect. It is guaranteed that you will receive tons of advantages by migrating to Amazon Connect. Some of the advantages are mentioned below.

Agility

The most important thing for any business is their customers’ needs and requirements that change over time. Luckily, Amazon Connect provides this facility to the businesses where they can eventually adapt to the customers’ changing needs and of course market dynamic.

Scalability

Providing a balanced scale to your contact centre resources is very important. You can now handle this scaling with the help of Amazon Connect. Either increase or decrease your resources depending on the situation. It will also ensure an optimal performance during busy times.

Cost Efficient

In a cloud-based environment, the cost for hardware and infrastructure gets reduced by a significant amount resulting in huge cost-savings.

On-Premises to Cloud Migration – Challenges

Moving your On-Premises contact centre to cloud is not a piece of cake. There are many issues which are associated with it including:

• Data migration complexities
• Potential downtime

Luckily, AWS is at service here providing adequate guidance for addressing these issues.

Migration Methodologies

There are many migration methodologies which you can choose according to your convenience. But before that, make sure to have the following prerequisites with you.

• An AWS account to access various services and most importantly Amazon Connect
• In order to host the contact centre you will be needing an Amazon Connect Instance
• To keep your business requirements align, design your contact flows

Step-by-Step Guidance

Following steps will be followed to successfully migrate your on-premises contact centre to cloud using Amazon Connect.

Step 1 – Data Migration

Customer Data

Data migration is a critical step to follow but AWS has provided ease here as well. Following AWS services can help you in efficient and smooth data migration.

• Amazon DynamoDB
• Amazon RDS
• AWS Data Migration Service

Here’s the code to perform the migration using AWS DMS.

$ aws configure

(For configuring AWS setup)

$ aws dms create-endpoint --endpoint-identifier source-endpoint --endpoint-type source --engine-name your-database-engine --username your-username --password your-password --server-name your-server-name --port your-port

(For creating AWS DMS Endpoint)

$ aws dms create-endpoint --endpoint-identifier target-endpoint --endpoint-type target --engine-name your-database-engine --username your-username --password your-password --server-name your-server-name --port your-port

(For creating AWS DMS Target Endpoint)

$ aws dms create-replication-instance --replication-instance-identifier your-replication-instance-identifier --replication-instance-class db.r5.large

(For creating AWS DMS Replication Instance)

$ aws dms create-replication-task --migration-type full-load --table-mappings your-table-mappings-json --migration-task-identifier your-migration-task-identifier --source-endpoint-arn source-endpoint-arn --target-endpoint-arn target-endpoint-arn

(For creating AWS DMS Replication Task)

Historical Interaction Data

Don’t worry about historical interaction data transfer as there are AWS services which make transfer of such data smooth enough including:

• AWS Snowball
• AWS Snowmobile
• Amazon S3 (Preferred for smaller datasets)

$ aws s3 sync your-local-directory s3://your-s3-bucket/

(For S3 Upload)

Step 2 – Amazon Connect Integration

Integrating Amazon Connect with your applications or systems should definitely be your next step. In order to experience a hurdle-free integration use AWS Lambda function.

#Sample AWS Lambda function

import boto3

def lambda_handler(event, context):

 # Your integration logic here

 return {

 'statusCode': 200,

 'body': 'Integration successful!'

 }

Step 3 – Implementing Multichannel Communication

You need to know that Amazon Connect supports multichannel communication like chat, voice and email etc. You have to design your contact flows in a way that it handles different communication channels.

Step 4 – AI and Analytics

You can build conversational interfaces as well as text-to-speech conversion using Amazon Lex and Amazon Polly respectively. In order to stream real-time analytics you can also use Amazon Connect Streams API.

Step 5 – Testing and Training

Testing and counter verification holds great importance. Make sure to test your contact flows, communication channels along with integrations.

Database Migration using AWS DMS – Database Migration Service

AWS Database Migration Service allows heterogeneity along with homogeneous migrations of databases to Amazon Connect. It allows the following advantages:

• Minimal Downtime
• Continuous Data Replication
• Smooth Transition

#Example command for initiating a database migration with AWS DMS

aws dms create-replication-task --replication-task-identifier my-replication-task --migration-type migrate

Migrating Contact Center Data and Configurations using AWS Application Migration Service

The biggest advantage of AWS Application Migration Service is that it allows migrating various applications along with contact centre configurations. It ensures a secure transfer of data.

#Example command for starting an application migration with AWS Application Migration Service

aws mgn start-replication-run --replication-job-id my-replication-job-id

Low Latency and High Bandwidth using AWS Direct Connect

You can utilize the network connectivity between Amazon Connect and On-premises to ensure reliable and safe data transfer. It will also overcome certain latency challenges which might occur during migration.

#Example command for creating a Direct Connect connection

aws directconnect create-connection --location my-location --bandwidth 1Gbps

AWS Migration Supporting Services

Following AWS services provide support for migration.

AWS Direct Connect for Dedicated Network Connectivity

Due to the establishment of network connection between Amazon Connect and On-Premises infrastructure, secured and low-latency communication is experienced.

EC2 Instance Types Optimized for Contact Center Workloads

It is important to choose the correct EC2 instance for your contact centre workloads in order to ensure optimal performance.

Amazon Elastic Block Store Volumes for Storage

Amazon EBS provides storage volumes that help in storing the contact centre data in a way that can be easily accessed.

AWS Data Backup and Restore

The backup and restoring process has been simplified by AWS which offers a variety of automated solutions for data protection.

#Example command for creating a backup plan with AWS Backup

aws backup create-backup-plan --backup-plan my-backup-plan

Amazon Connect Deployment on AWS

There are 3 types of deployments to follow which are mentioned below.

Single AZ Deployment for Non-Production

A single AZ deployment is a better pick for cost-effective development and testing especially in non-production environments.

Multi AZ Deployment with Cross Zone Load Balancing for Production

A high fault tolerance for uninterrupted customer service is ensured by a multi AZ deployment in production environment.

Auto Scaling Groups for Dynamic Capacity

Auto scaling is a great feature that allows Amazon Connect to increase the capacity based on the user demand.

You can refer to this official tutorial for further assistance

Conclusion

All in all, there are numerous advantages of migrating your contact centre with Amazon Connect along with AWS. By taking full advantage of AWS services and following a proper guideline, many businesses can overcome migration complexities in order to experience a smooth transition to cloud-based contact centre.