Tom Morgan: 0:01

Welcome to ACP, the Amazon Connect podcast. This is the show that focuses on Amazon Connect and related technologies. I'm your host, Tom Morgan, and I'm joined as usual by my co host, AWS Solution Architect and Contact Center Consultant, Alex Baker. Find out more about Cloud Interact by visiting us at cloudinteract. io. It's time for another ACP and a very special one this episode. Um, we are live in London at the second independent user group for Amazon connects. We were here for the first one back in episode 12. Um, but we are here for the second one. Uh, Alex is with me. Hello, Alex.

Alex Baker: 0:53

Hello, Tom. How are you doing?

Tom Morgan: 0:54

Good. Thank you. Good to see you in person. Um, and, uh, I'm excited for today. I think, uh, we've, uh, we've been here. We've got some coffee. Um, we're sort of waiting for the keynote and everything to start. But looking around the room, what's your take on sort of who's here and who's sponsoring and stuff like that?

Alex Baker: 1:12

Um, yeah, there's Some new, new faces, uh, which is great. There are some new sponsors as well. Obviously, Cloud Interact sponsoring again. Um, but yeah, I think the attendance is really good. I'd say probably numbers slightly up on last time. Uh, and it's good that John's been able to get sort of fresh interest into it and new people to talk to. Um, always found it really valuable at the last one, um, talking to people about their individual experiences deploying Amazon Connect. So hopefully lots more of that today.

Tom Morgan: 1:42

Yeah, definitely. And I've already noticed a couple of AWS people here as well. We're going to try and grab them later to get their take. But I think that's actually a really good, um, kind of a positive data point, isn't it? Around the value of something like this, getting partners, customers together to kind of be open with each other about what works and what doesn't. Um, and, and ways, you know, tips and tricks and things like that.

Alex Baker: 2:04

Yeah, absolutely. And, um, I, I think AWS probably see that this is a, you know, quite a substantial user base. I, I think John took a, an estimate at this group represents maybe getting on for a hundred thousand deployed agents, which is really, really impressive. Um, so yeah, I, I think it's, it's an incredibly value, valuable event. It's nice to see that AWS have. I've got some representation here again. We've got friend of the podcast, Ari Hasekamp, who was on one of our previous episodes. Um, so yes, good to see some, some, uh, interesting AWS faces. We've got, um, Havan over there who we've spoken to about forecasting capacity planning and scheduling, not on the podcast, but we should probably try and get some of his words of wisdom while we're here as well.

Tom Morgan: 2:51

Definitely. And, uh, the John you referred to is John Ng. He's the sort of founder. user group. We're going to try and catch up with him as well. Um, and he's going to be, uh, giving our sort of keynote introductory, uh, talk to this morning.

John Ing: 3:06

So again, you know, the vision here was about bringing the right people together. Again, absolutely delighted to see what we've got in the room today. Um, you know, it's a growing band of people. Um, and the idea being is we're all going to help each other to get the maximum value of the investment and that we've made. Either in using, uh, Connect, or helping organizations use Connect. So, you know, it's multi purposes, so it's hopefully all inclusive. Um, and again, best practice for all things Amazon Connect, sharing best practice, Insights Collaborative, to solve operational issues.

Ruben Opdenakker: 3:43

Ruben Opdenacker, Head of Product Management at Mobile Connect. And we offer a mobile application on top of Amazon Connect.

Tom Morgan: 3:50

Okay, so we've just seen your session actually. Um, and that was really, really interesting. And a couple of takeaways kind of for me. The user experience seems quite simple. Like, screenshots, I think. Um, it seemed very integrated into the environment. Um,

Ruben Opdenakker: 4:09

Yeah. And that's a very deliberate choice. Um, whenever we do a new design round, we're actually looking at how does this look on iOS and Android and how can we replicate that experience with our app? But then with Amazon connect in the background, of course,

Tom Morgan: 4:20

you were talking a lot about almost, um, shadow calls, like sort of calls that are happening outside of your contact center. Um, and, and how an application such as yours, which kind of brings some of Amazon connect to people's mobile devices can help, um, sort of solve that problem. And. I think before going into a session, I didn't really get a sense of what you meant by that. But I think the examples you gave were really good. Um, both on an inbound and outbound 20, if you could just dig into them just a little bit, just kind of paint a picture for people about what it is your application does and why, why it's useful, why it's important.

Alex Baker: 4:52

Yeah.

Ruben Opdenakker: 4:53

So we're basically always serving people outside of the contact center. And that could be salespeople, field technicians, basically Anyone who is mobile and still making calls with your customers or receiving calls with your customers. That's very great potential to bring down on Amazon connect with a mobile app because you have all the benefits of Amazon connect, but then mobile as well.

Alex Baker: 5:12

And,

Tom Morgan: 5:12

and so that's both outbound inbound, I guess, like, and it's different. You had different use cases like private banking is a good inbound one. Um, and then you had like a, or as field engineers as your outbound one, which kind of completely makes sense. Um, so technically how does that work? Is it, how are you making those

Ruben Opdenakker: 5:28

calls? The calls go directly over Amazon Connect. So you just log into the app and we're just an endpoint. So, um, Amazon Connect can't even see the difference if that call is coming from mobile or via the desktop. It's using the same technology. It's using the same API. So from the moment that you make an outbound call, for example, that just runs over Amazon Connect telephony and it runs like your desktop version. Got it. And this is, this came up

Tom Morgan: 5:51

actually as a question in the session, but it's WebRTC based primarily. You said there was a sort of PSTN backup, but it's. That's, that's right, isn't it? It's WebRTC primarily.

Ruben Opdenakker: 5:58

Yeah, it's WebRTC primarily, but if you have a bad internet connection, we will give you a notification. Bad internet connection, and you can switch to PSTN. Same functionalities, the only difference is that the call is going over PSTN and no longer over the internet.

Tom Morgan: 6:10

Where do you see So where do you see this kind of take up with with customers? Is there a particular vertical? Is there a particular country? I know you sort of service a couple of different countries around the world and you've, you've come over to the UK today. So that's fantastic. Great to see. Um, and so, yeah, where do you see kind of that interest?

Ruben Opdenakker: 6:28

Biggest industry verticals for us are healthcare, like mobile nurses, home nurses, doctors, um, and then secondly, it's really like the whole insurance and banking business because you have so many advisors, private bankers and those people that are talking to customers all the time. Um, so that's definitely the two biggest verticals in terms of location. Yeah. Biggest markets are definitely UK and U. S. for us.

Tom Morgan: 6:49

Whereabouts are you based? I knew you're based in Europe. I didn't catch exactly where. We're based in beautiful Belgium, Brussels. Yeah. Lovely. Very nice. Good. Good. Um, so let's talk, uh, let's talk money. Uh, so how, how is this, how do people pay for this service? Is it per month? Is it per agent? How, how has it done?

Ruben Opdenakker: 7:06

Yeah, so we are available on AWS Marketplace basically have two models. It's a pay as you go model where you just pay per hour use that you log into the app. And secondly, we also have a subscription model fixed price per user per month. Um, and you have unlimited access to the app all month. Fantastic. Sounds really good.

Tom Morgan: 7:23

And folks can find you on the AWS Marketplace.

John Ing: 7:29

I met Paul, Paul, five, six years ago I think. Uh, when I was looking for a voice biometric solution. And I come across these guys and um, I fell in love with their product. And I'll let Paul tell the story. Um, so over to you Paul. Thank you John. I love

Paul Magee: 7:46

working in a group like this. It's, it's small enough for me to, rather than give a speech or a lecture, I'm To have a conversation. A conversation is welcomes both sides. So as we go through, if anybody, if I say something that either you don't agree with or you want more detail on, then ask and interact. I can go for, you know, seven, seven or eight, nine hours before I need anything to stop. I've got 30 minutes, but I'd like to try and make sure I'm on topic for the team here. And we've got people that understand voice biometrics, know a lot about it. So, I'm going to try and not stay too long in the, uh, in the, uh, Why should you do it? Because most people know. But maybe on some of the more detailed reasons on why you should do it and what you shouldn't do and things like that. Hi, I'm Paul McGee. I'm the CEO of Arraya. Arraya is a voice biometric technology company. It started about 15 years ago, but it started 15 years ago because the first 15 years in voice biometrics was really hard. We wanted to do something different and we've created a technology that's easy to deploy, works like it's supposed to, and we're enjoying some really good growth at the moment.

Tom Morgan: 8:52

Fantastic. And so what was really interesting for me because we've just sat through your session, um, voice biometrics is not in my mind. Voice biometrics is something that is Government security, maybe private banking. Like my bank doesn't do voice biometrics. Like, is that just cause I don't have enough money? Is that what it is? Like, or are you seeing it trickling, trickling down through the market? What are you seeing there?

Paul Magee: 9:15

Yeah, look, it's um, voice biometrics used to be for organizations were big enough to have a really, really, really expensive problem. They had usually tens of thousands of agents spending up to 20 percent of their time doing manual verification process, which was costing millions of dollars of efficiency. Those organizations were able to spend millions of dollars over a long period of time to reduce the number of manual verifications and save enough money to pay for the cost of the technology. In short, it cost a lot of money to put a voice biometric system in. Today, with cloud, with advances in technology and with a whole lot of other advancements in not only our technology but contact in the platforms. Uh, even the smallest organization gets benefit from deploying voice biometric and it's not about saving millions of dollars. It can be as much, it can be as important to save organizations with the cost of, of compliance with data privacy. Um, not having to have agents that are working from home. Ask customers for their PII still allow them access to their information.

Tom Morgan: 10:25

Yeah, absolutely. And there was a really interesting point from your session. I hadn't really considered before as well is that it's not only the protection of making sure you know that the customer is the right person, the customer is, you know, it's the customer you think it is, but actually around the, the potential bad actors within your agent pool as well. And I thought that was really, I'd never really thought about that before.

Paul Magee: 10:45

Yeah. Well, it's in, in reality. There's relatively little fraud from bad actors in the agent pool. So we don't want to make that a problem that bigger than it is, but it is there. But what is really expensive is making sure that organizations can prove that they are taking care to make sure agents aren't stealing data from their customers and aren't being able to, um, break into their accounts to see if they can take advantage of a dormant account. Yes.

Tom Morgan: 11:16

Yeah. And I particularly liked your example of. Because Voice is the biometric, you don't need to show the agent all that information. They don't need to have the access to it. There is, you've removed that risk. So, yeah.

Paul Magee: 11:28

Yeah, and look, it makes it easier for people to work from home without, um, without data leaking. It makes it easier for organisations to stop worrying about the compliance training and then the compliance. Testing and checking. I don't have to worry about doing all that because agents don't have access to pay. The normal process means that agents don't normally have to have access to

Ruben Opdenakker: 11:50

PII.

Tom Morgan: 11:52

So you've got this kind of global view at the moment around connect, take up and, and voice wire tricks. So thinking kind of voice wiretricks, but also connect globally, how are you seeing take up? Is it different across the world? Cause you know, it's, it's easy sometimes to have a very either a UK centric view or a UK centric view European or US entry view, but, um, cause you play in several different markets, right?

Paul Magee: 12:12

Yeah, so it's been really interesting for me. Um, I got to know Amazon connect very early in its Evolution in when it was an infant and we were involved in Helping Amazon connect qualify to provide contact center technology into some of the biggest contact centers in the world. Whereas, uh, I think in the U. S., there are a lot of Amazon Connect contact centers being provided at the mid or lower end of the market. They were earning their, their um, their spurs in the um, The smaller end of the market, whereas maybe in Australia and the UK, some of the biggest organizations took on the, um, we'll do Amazon Connect for a big contact center. And I think, um, obviously, um, Amazon has also sold some big systems in the U. S. But I think they had, in pure volume terms, had a lot of contact centers that were relatively small. And in the rest of the world, they had some big contact centers. So maybe it's a, there's nothing different. Everybody's got the same issues. It's been a little bit more difficult for organizations that weren't in English speaking parts of the world to get access to some of the voice stuff. Um, but, um, you know, we've been lucky enough to be on some really big banks. We've been some really big government departments and we've been also involved in some really small, quite nifty and innovative places. And I can see some organizations that didn't even think they had a contact center, but because it was so easy to deploy Amazon connect, um, chains of, um, Retail outlets all of a sudden became Um, a contact center because they could pass calls around between shops and, um, and the people that weren't busy selling were on the phones doing inbound and outbound calls using Amazon Connect. They thought they were retailers, but they'd become retailers that were contact center agents.

Alex Baker: 14:04

I was going to ask Paul about, there was a really interesting bit in your talk about how, uh, voice biometrics isn't necessarily kind of just the answer to ID and V. It should be part of a sort of multifaceted approach. I was wondering if you give us a minute on why that's important.

Paul Magee: 14:20

Yeah, terrific, and it's one of my favorite themes. There is no one single bullet to solve a strong authentication. It really is a multi layered issue, and the number of layers really depends on the risk that involved and the, um, and the things that you're concerned about. So, I'm a great advocate of device. We all carry it. Usually today, we are identified more by our, the device that we carry, which we used to call a phone, it's now a device. Um, and if I've got that device, then organisation can be reasonably confident of who is using it, because, um, Um, most, uh, contact with a contact center or interactions with a website, web or, uh, app is a legitimate call from the owner of the device. But if all I rely on is the owner of the device, then I'm exposing the organization and the consumers to a high risk. So let me, uh, claim my identity because I'm using the device. Let me get access to simple things that are not, uh, PII related and not risky because I've got the right device. But as soon as you want to give access to personal information. I find it strange these days that I travel a lot. If I want to ring a hotel because I'm delayed and I want to change my, um, My reservation, they're not even going to say whether I've got a reservation there, let alone let me change it. Because who am I? Am I ringing up to find out who's going where? No, I've got to prove who I am before I can even, um, see if I've got a reservation. Let alone an airline letter. So it's, I'm not transferring money, I'm just exposing personal information. And so that's where Voice Biometrics comes into play. It used to be government departments, it used to be banks. Now it's everybody that has access to PII, wants to give convenient service, but doesn't want to expose or be at risk of exposing somebody's PII.

Tom Morgan: 16:17

Yeah, yeah, that's interesting. Um, and I think this is your first visit to this user group. So thoughts on today?

Paul Magee: 16:23

Oh, look, I was rapt. I thought, um, uh, John Ings, a, a, not only a wonderful advocate for the technology, he's very knowledgeable and is personable. The, the, the way he got people to open up and talk about stuff, the way that, uh, people from different organisations were willing to share is fantastic. The, the opportunity to, um, What other people are doing around the world to this group and and the way John runs it is I felt obliged not to turn it into an ad for our company, but more of a exposure of what voice biometric can and should do for organizations and their customers.

John Ing: 17:04

We're now on our AWS interactive session. Where you might have questions, comments, and things like that, just to help with some context, I guess, and to get the brain thinking. I took this snapshot last night, okay? So I know one of the challenges that a lot of people have with AWS and Amazon Connect is the continual stream of new updates, new releases, products, and stuff like that. And, you know, I think the challenge, and I'm getting some nods around the room, is how do you keep pace with this? And how do you make sure you understand the reality rather than your own personal perception of the product itself? Because, again, I think for me, and I've seen Connect when it was barely voiced, as I say, back in 2018, to what it is today. Um, and I don't know how many releases there's been in the last five or six years. There's probably been a thousand, if not more. Um, and therefore your perception within an organization of what you can do and what you can't do with your product. That's, that's a general thought thing. Um, thank you so far. If anybody's still got to put one, one thing on the board, uh, please do so. Um, I am going to go through, through lunchtime and see if there's anything we want to pull out specifically. Hopefully the food is, is good. Um, it's certainly the pictures of it look good when I'm instituting it. Uh, but obviously the proof is in the eating. Um, and I'll see you back here at quarter past one.

Pavan Dusanapudi: 18:41

I'm Pawan Dosanupudi. I am a WWCXC agent scheduling lead SA.

Tom Morgan: 18:47

Okay, so run that through me again. So WW, worldwide, and the rest of it, yeah.

Pavan Dusanapudi: 18:51

Customer experience and engagement. Uh, agent scheduling, uh, Amazon Connect agent scheduling capability, uh, lead SEA.

Tom Morgan: 19:00

Okay, perfect. And you've just given us, uh, a session all about the, the capabilities in Amazon Connect for forecasting, for scheduling, for capacity planning. This is a new role for you, or you've moved into it, or you've been doing it for a while, but like

Pavan Dusanapudi: 19:13

No, thank you. Yeah, this is a new role for me. I've been an SME for forecasting, capacity planning and scheduling for a while, but I've been helping a UK bank to migrate 7, 000 agents to our agent scheduling platform. So in that process, I've been given an opportunity to become the lead SEA for

Alex Baker: 19:33

Can I ask Pavan how long you've actually been at AWS and working with Amazon Connect actually?

Pavan Dusanapudi: 19:37

Yeah, I'm with AWS for a little over four years. So in this span, I had been fortunate to help actually top two out of the five UK banks in terms of customer base to migrate onto Amazon Connect. And now I'm fortunate to be giving the contact center architecture from grounds up.

Tom Morgan: 19:58

And I think one of the things you were saying is that actually having a Your forecasting, your scheduling, your capacity planning built into Amazon connect gives you some real unique benefits, right? Because it's all part of the same platform.

Pavan Dusanapudi: 20:09

Yeah, absolutely. I think, again, we work backwards from our customer feedback and what our customers tell is they wanted a native capabilities, easy to use platform that is infused with EIM and ML. They don't have to think about AML, it just works and finally provide a workflow capabilities that automates a lot of contact center managers mundane tasks.

Tom Morgan: 20:32

And you're here today, the user group. What are your thoughts on how today's been? I know you've been here for most of it anyway.

Pavan Dusanapudi: 20:40

No, absolutely. I mean, this is a fantastic event. I think what's the What's the, you know, uh, one thing that is very good about this event. This is an independent event led by our customers and partners, and it is great to hear their feedback in an, you know, informal settings. And, I mean, uh, you know, overall great to hear from our partners and customers how they have been leveraging Amazon Connect platform and not just using, but also innovating, uh, using Amazon Connect and other 200 plus AWS services. So, anyway, yeah. You know, it's not partners come up with and customers coming up with innovative solutions is really great to hear.

John Ing: 21:24

Hi, I'm John Ng. I'm the founder of the independent user group for Amazon Connect. We've just come to the end of the second

Tom Morgan: 21:32

day and,

John Ing: 21:33

uh, how do you think it went? I think it's gone really, really well. I think it's like anything. When you, when you do something first, it's novel, new, people are interested and things like that. When you do it again, you need to try and maintain some sort of novelty or new, new, newness to it. Um, and therefore that, that was something I really was keen to try and make sure. So, uh, now I'm, I'm delighted. We've got some people that were here the first time and therefore they are second timers. And we've got people that weren't at the first one that have managed to come to the second time. And they want to come to the next one. So, yeah, all in all, good day.

Tom Morgan: 22:08

Yeah, definitely. That's the thing we were talking about earlier actually. Yeah. There's a really good mix of new people, both sponsors and attendees.

John Ing: 22:15

Yeah. And again, it's a, it's a balance I'm trying to think about how best to grow the awareness of the user group and where it's the best place to do that. There's also a fact of the, you know, the, the, the user group is interested in certain things at certain times. And therefore I'm keen to try and make sure that what we have on the agenda is of interest, but also. Relevant at the time. I don't think I was quite keen. Some of the conversations today.

Tom Morgan: 22:46

Yeah, no, for sure. And some of the things we covered today are things that we we see customers talking about. So I think that's definitely that's definitely true. One of the things I really like about this. I think there's people have relaxed into it on this second time is how it's it's a safe space to talk, right? And I think you you lay that out at the beginning. You did that last time. Um, and I think that's quite important to get customers talking to customers and partners and AWS all together in a room.

John Ing: 23:13

Absolutely. That's sort of the number one intent. Um, if you look at the website, it talks about the mission of bringing people together, the right people together to collaborate, learn and share. And that's what this is all about. It's all I'm trying to do is facilitate that conversation. Um, you know, we need to be mindful of allowing that conversation to happen. Okay. And for people to feel comfortable in the space that we're operating in. And I think the fact that we've all got a common interest that helps, it's almost like we all support the same football team or whatever it might be. And therefore, we feel some of the barriers that might exist otherwise are not there. Um, but without that, you know, openness and willingness to share and collaborate. It'd be really difficult, but people seem to buy into it.

Alex Baker: 24:01

Can you share any plans about sort of expansion beyond the UK, John? I think you mentioned maybe a US session might be on the cards?

John Ing: 24:10

Yeah, so, uh, there's, there's two avenues currently in discussion. One is the US. The challenge with the US is probably where and how do you break a country the size of it is and the number of, you know, Amazon connect consumers. Where do you target the location? So that's something I'm trying to get some insight on. And I've got, I've got some customers that I'm aware of to help me try and shape that. And again, you know, it'll probably start relatively small, similar to what we did back in June, but we'll see if we can use the same sort of model. And in addition to that, which is probably a little bit more mature from a conversational point of view is out in Australia. Um, I was fortunate enough to talk to some Amazon connect consumer, uh, Uh, with AWS about a month ago, uh, when I was actually on a trip in America, uh, explaining what we're trying to do around the independent user group. And there's been some interest on the back of that. So, um, that's probably more further ahead than the U. S. So if I could try and get something, and I don't necessarily want to put a time frame to this, but that's probably, you know, the next one to target. Um, but again, I will want to focus on making sure we run another event in the UK, probably about May time.

Tom Morgan: 25:27

You've kind of structured the day. So there's, there's talks from sponsors, there's kind of event, there's kind of things for people to participate in. There's discussion groups. What for you has been the best part of today?

John Ing: 25:39

People turning up. Uh, no, um, it's, it's, it's quiet. Difficult to put into words, you know, I get a great sense of pride of thinking when, when you put something out there and people want to participate and get involved in, and what they do, they demonstrate that by turning up. Um, and because I'm beginning to know some of these people, I know if they turn up, they'll participate and they'll contribute, so I'm less worried about that bit. Um, I know other things get in the way. Um, I know there was people that were due to come today and wanted to come today but couldn't. Um, but, you know, for me, the biggest challenge is about getting people to be aware of it, you know, freeing their diaries up to come spend the day, which is not necessarily work related for them, but hopefully of value that they feel that it's worth coming. Well, looking forward to the next one. Thanks very much. Thank you.

Tom Morgan: 26:43

Okay, so we've come to the end of the day, uh, Alex and I actually on the train on the way home because we didn't get a chance to talk, uh, whilst we were there. Um, Alex, what do you think about today? How did it go?

Alex Baker: 26:54

Uh, yeah, another great day. Credit to John for kind of pulling off another really good event, kind of carrying on the momentum from the first time round. Some, we mentioned it earlier, but some, some great new faces, some new experiences to talk about. Um, a whole load of extra sort of round table discussions, which were really valuable. Uh, and yeah, all in all, really, really useful day, I thought.

Tom Morgan: 27:20

Yeah, definitely. It was nice to see new faces. And, uh, it was nice to see how welcome they were sort of, you know, uh, accepted as well. You know, it was a very friendly atmosphere, I thought. And, um, yeah, everybody's willing to talk to everyone else. It's a, it's a really good day, actually. Honestly, if you're If you're thinking about attending to the next one, I would say definitely look it up, um, you know, find out when the next one is, get involved, because, uh, there's a lot of value to just kind of talking to your peers and understanding what everyone else is doing, um, as well, and kind of exciting as well to see John's plans for the future as well, right?

Alex Baker: 27:56

Yeah, I'm really hoping that we get to tag along on a trip to the US or Australia or something for the next one, definitely.

Tom Morgan: 28:04

Yeah, absolutely. All right, that's gonna do it for today. Um, we're going to bring this episode to an end. Thank you all very much for listening, and be sure to subscribe in your favorite podcast player. That way you won't miss it. Whilst you're there, we'd love it if you would rate and review us. And as a new podcast, if you have colleagues that you think would benefit from this content, please let them know. To find out more about how Cloud Interact can help you on your contact center journey, visit cloudinteract. io. We're wrapping this call up now and we'll connect with you next time.