Amazon Web Services is making the software it uses to support customers available to businesses to use as their own call center infrastructure. The news was announced Tuesday.
That means a corporation (i.e. An airline) could use AWS Connect—which relies on Amazon Lex, the voice recognition technology found in Amazon’s Echo connected speaker—to determine what the caller wants and route the call accordingly.
Many companies have been turning to cloud-based support capabilities offered by companies like Zendesk (ZEN). While Amazon Connect (AMZN) may compete with such products, it will also integrate with them so customers can keep using their existing call agent technology if desired.
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Other partners listed in the release include Appian, Freshdesk, Paxata, Salesforce (CRM), SugarCRM, Tableau (DATA), and Twilio (TWLO). Customers who need help implementing the product can turn to integration partners, like Accenture or Wipro.
Until recently, most companies relied on legacy and typically expensive call center products from tech providers such Avaya, Genesys, and Cisco (CSCO). Amazon Connect lets companies pay by the minute as they go both for Amazon Connect and associated telephone charges but with no upfront commitment.
With this move, AWS—which has already upset the apple cart for older tech companies from IBM (IBM) to Microsoft (MSFT)—is expanding into new markets against another set of competitors.
