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Direct Dial and Agent?

Not every contact center wants callers to be able to dial a specific agent directly.  In fact, more times than not, it is discourage entirely.  Certain enterprises however find it a real necessity.   Customer service operations, technical support and telemedicine are good examples of service centers that would benefit by this feature.   Often in these use cases, the agent assigns some "homework" that requires the caller to hang up and go check something and call back.   We all know how frustrating it is to call into a contact center and be treated like this is the first call!  Enabling a customer to reach the same representative that they worked with in the last call is a real time saver and improves both the efficiency of the call center and satisfaction of the client!

Not a native feature for Amazon Connect

As is the case in most features in this AWS service, you will have to configure it yourself.   The provided tutorial will walk you through how to build this out (clearly we are in the business of helping you do this)!  The key components of this solution are a number of AWS services and some contact flows that support the feature:

• Not required by helpful for voice mail,  VoiceMail Express application
• S3 to support static website used for userAdministration
• Cognito to protect access to the admin website
• API Gateway to facilitate connectivity between the website and the lambda back end
• DynamoDB to list and maintain agent extension numbers
• Lambda functions to update and maintain user extension list
• Clearly and Amazon Connect Contact Center!

Configuration Overview

The front end contact flow prompts the caller to enter the extension number of the representative. This is usually just an add on to your existing greeting.  For example: " Thanks for calling our company, if you know your representatives extension number you can enter it now, or press 1 for sales or 2 for support".   The caller will be routed through contact flows to the representatives queue and if available, directly connected. If the representative is on the phone, the caller is offered a choice to try another team member, or continue to hold.  If the representative is logged out, the caller is offered the option to try another team member of leave a voice message.

Back End Configuration

The website enables system administrators to add extension numbers to the agents defined in the contact center.   The supporting lambda functions draw form both the user database in the Amazon Connect instance and the DynamoDB table you create to provide extension number to those agents.   Cognito is recommended as a security front end to the website enabling only credentialed administrators to log in! You can find the sample contact flows and lambda functions and HTML/Javascript for this tutorial  in the DrVoIP store!