AWS Amazon Connect Review: AWS Phone System Features & Pricing

In this Amazon Connect review, we’ll be talking about the software solution by Amazon for all things contact centers and call centers. This article will discuss whether Amazon Connect is any good, go over the pricing plans, and offer some advice about what Amazon Connect is best used for. Then, we’ll run through the main features and tools.

AWS Amazon Connect review 2023: Is the AWS phone system any good?

What does any reader want out of an Amazon Connect review article? To know, simply, is it any good, and should I use it for my contact center software needs.

Firstly, it needs to be said that while you can use Amazon Connect as a tool for your customer support team, or for a help desk and complaint management system, Amazon Connect is mostly about telephony tools. This means that for non-phone use cases like email, SMS, live chat, chatbots and more, you might want other apps to handle things. However, there are some non–phone system tools, like chatbots, as we’ll see.

Next, it should be noted how well Amazon Connect works when you already use AWS services, or Amazon Web Services. Keeping all your commerce needs within the Amazon ecosystem means more streamlined functionality. Combining your ecommerce, warehousing and shipping SaaS with a contact call center solution is one of the great advantages that this tools offers.

Finally, Amazon has tons of AI running through Connect, from machine learning (ML) which helps reps improve their performances in real-time, to natural language understanding (NLU), that’s useful for self service and other aids to your team.

Amazon Connect pricing plans

First of all, how much does Amazon Connect cost? Amazon Connect has a free tier with pay-as-you-go features. Let’s first review Amazon Connect prices:

Amazon Connect free vs paid: what’s the difference?

As we mentioned, it’s a free platform with pay-as-you-go tools.

Are there any Amazon Connect coupon codes or promo discount vouchers?

We did the research, and it seems there are no Amazon Connect coupon codes or discount vouchers at this time. However, there are discounts for toll-free numbers in the United States.

Amazon Connect overview: What is Amazon Connect & What is Amazon Connect used for?

Basically, Amazon Connect is used for handling telephony and other related customer contact center features. It’s a great cloud-based SaaS to use alongside AWS for managing contact flows and other contact communication.

Amazon Connect features list 

The main features of Amazon Connect are:

• Basic telephone features

• Amazon Connect softphone

• Call recording

• Omnichannel communication

• Predictive dialer

• Answering machine

• Amazon Lex chatbots

• Task management

• Automation and workflow builder

• IVR

• Routing

• Customer data management

• Issue tracking

• Amazon Connect Wisdom

• Fraud detection

• Amazon Contact Lens sentiment analysis

• Amazon Contact Lens call summaries

• Forecasting and planning

• Analytics

• Integrations

Basic telephone features

Cloud contact center features get your direct inbound dialing, over 200 outbound calling destinations, and toll free phone numbers from over 20 countries. Basic telephone pricing is pay-as-you-go. Meanwhile, the CCP, or contact control panel, streamlines with Amazon Connect’s phone tools, providing things like CRM data to your agents.

Amazon Connect softphone

The Amazon Connect softphone ensures your reps are hearing the best quality and that users on the other end also have perfect sound quality, which is key for maintaining a high customer experience satisfaction level. This part of Amazon’s contact center solution is resistant to packet loss and has high-quality 16kHz audio.

Call recording

Having inbound and outbound call recording of your customer interactions is a fantastic way to train staff and analyze success rates. This feature is baked right into Amazon Connect. 

Omnichannel communication

While AC is normally all about phones, when it comes to outbound marketing and messaging, there is omnichannel cloud communication, combining the phone, text messaging and email from one user interface. It’s easy to navigate the contact list or create contact channels, or set up pre-recorded audio messages to play when people pick up but before they’re routed to a rep.

Predictive dialer

A predictive dialer is great to help reps go through lists of end users, but Amazon’s version of this is built around machine learning that can tell the difference between a human, a voicemail or any other phone signal. The predictive dialer tool can also throttle calls based on how busy reps are. You can set it to progressive dialing mode which waits for an available rep, or predictive which dials based on metrics of average availability.

Amazon Lex chatbots

Here’s another non-telephone tool that you can use with Amazon Connect. It’s Lex, the machine learning and natural language understanding tool for chatbots. No coding knowledge is needed to configure this feature. Such chatbots can be a great help for self service, or to get a conversation started before it needs passing on to a human. 

Task management

Included is Amazon Connect Tasks to improve agent organization. This is a great tool for getting follow-ups, handling requests and notifications. You can create tasks directly from calling or chatting.

Automation and workflow builder

Amazon Connect has many tools for automation. There is Amazon Lambda that creates call flows based on targeted personal preferences. Genesys is another tool, though Genesys is not officially an Amazon tool. Genesys adds features like conversational AI to your AWS. Likewise, CXone is another integration for a more complete customer experience management automation platform. Of course, with an API, you can use Amazon SaaS with other SaaS like Twilio.

IVR

For more self service options, Amazon Connect has voice ID as well as interactive voice response, or IVR. The IVR tools are also fueled by machine learning and NLU, and are solid for collecting basic customer information or verifying contact ID. 

Routing

There are many ways that Amazon Connect employs routing in their platform. From omnichannel routing that combines routing, queuing and analytics in one user interface, to skills-based call routing which makes sure each customer speaks to the best rep for the job. 

Customer data management

Amazon Connect can serve as a sort of CRM with unified customer profiles. This aggregates customer data from many different apps, like Salesforce and Zendesk. You get rich contact profiles, engagement histories, transcripts, and other useful metrics like the number of times they’ve been put on hold. Using an integration or API can also grab data from places like LinkedIn.

Issue tracking

Case management and issue tracking are part and parcel of AC. It fuses its functionality with task management to better and more quickly resolve problems, as well as provides useful stats on case status, details, and summaries. Once again, Amazon’s machine learning plays its part in issue management. 

Amazon Connect Wisdom

Here’s another machine learning feature designed to near instantly get agents all the info they need in real-time. It’s like a digital personal assistant. It can pull data from wikis, shared files and FAQs. 

Fraud detection

The Amazon Connect Voice ID is useful for fraud detection and caller authentication. It can analyze voice characteristics to make matches as well as use network meta data for further accuracy.

Amazon Contact Lens sentiment analysis

Amazon’s Contact Lens uses machine learning to listen to calls to analyze how the customer is feeling, whether they are satisfied, frustrated or despondent. It can help guide the rep in real-time as well as give managers insights into their team.

Amazon Contact Lens call summaries

Automatically get important call summary information with Contact Lens, This sums up the results of the call, and if there are any follow-ups or further events planned. 

Forecasting and planning

You get Amazon Connect forecasting abilities after a few months of it analyzing your activity. ML gives you short-term and long-term forecasts on trends which is ideal for workload planning and scheduling.

Amazon Connect pros and cons

Here are the advantages and disadvantages of Amazon Connect:

Amazon Connect advantages

It’s free to get started, and simple to set up your Connect call center. The pay-as-you-go features make it easy to manage your expenses.

If you run a shop with AWS, then Connect is the perfect call center tool. 

The level of machine learning and automation is very impressive with Amazon Connect.

Amazon Connect disadvantages

Some users prefer to see monthly and annular prices for more stability.

For using Connect with apps by names that aren’t Salesforce, like Microsoft, you’ll need integrations.

Amazon Connect complaints & praise (from real Amazon Connect customer reviews)

The positive Amazon Connect reviews love the user friendliness, the flexible pricing, and some of the features like Contact Lens, Lex and Lambda.

Negative reviews of Amazon Connect are not thrilled about the need for some third party apps like CXone and Genesys.

Review of Amazon Connect support

There are Amazon Connect events, webinars and training sessions. As for Amazon customer service, Amazon is quite well-known for providing good support across all their products and this includes Amazon Connect. 

Is the Amazon connect phone system worth it? Our final points

That burning question remains: Is Amazon Connect worth it? It sure is, especially if you already use AWS and its other products.

Our final Amazon Connect rating

We give Amazon Connect a solid 4.5 out of 5 stars.

Amazon Connect FAQs

Is Amazon Connect part of Amazon?

Amazon Connect is part of Amazon Web Services as their cloud-based contact center module. It is a set of tools for customer service including telephony, chatbots and task management. Amazon Connect helps speed up issue resolution and provides valuable data on a customer support team performance.

Does Amazon Connect record calls?

Amazon Connect includes a call recording feature as part of their main set of tools. Call recording for Amazon Connect can be used for both inbound and outbound calls. This is a very useful feature for coaching support reps and getting real time insights into customer sentiment. 

Does Amazon Connect use SIP?

You can use Amazon Chime Voicer Connector with your SIP, or session initiation protocol. A SIP is how you allow customers and agents to communicate over a variety of multimedia. However, you cannot use Amazon Connect with SIP unless you do so through a third party. Both Connect and Chime are AWS products.

Does Amazon Connect have a seat minimum?

Amazon Connect does not have any seat minimum, nor does it have any monthly or annual commitments of any kind. It is a free platform for an unlimited number of users. It is only the tools and features you pay for on a per use basis.

Is Amazon Connect FedRAMP certified?

Amazon Connect is certified for FedRAMP. Every product in the Amazon Web Services (AWS) catalog is authorized for use by FedRAMP for federal or DoD purposes. This goes for DISA. This certification is documented in the Provisional Authority to Operate, which is great news for many users who require this.

Does Amazon Connect have email?

Amazon Connect does not have email, however you can connect your email to Amazon Connect. Amazon Connect is a product offered by Amazon Web Services, or AWS. AWS does have email products, for example, Amazon Simple Email Services, or SES, and Amazon Workmail that is more advanced.