Today, I’ll delve into the importance of real-time monitoring and working towards the automation of important tasks, not only to improve the customer experience but to give valuable resources the ability to focus on other priorities. By leveraging the AWS suite, including AmazonConnect, you can utilize powerful tools for real-time queue monitoring and automation to stay ahead.

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Why Real-Time Queue Monitoring Matters

Real-time monitoring of queues and call center statistics is common practice in the industry, however, here are a few ways that this practice can improve operational efficiency:

• Bottleneck detection: Identify queues with high wait times or excessive calls.
• Resource allocation: Redirect agents to high-priority queues or balance workloads.
• Improved customer experience: Reduce abandonment rates through proactive management.
• Supervisor Management: Eliminate the need for manual queue monitoring and intervention, allowing supervisors to focus on strategic tasks, agent coaching, and improving team performance.
• Identifying Trends: Uncovering patterns, such as peak call times, recurring customer issues, or agent performance trends. These insights help inform operational decisions, optimize resources, and drive continuous improvement.

For Amazon Connect, these real-time queue metrics can be accessed in a variety of ways, depending on the use case and level of monitoring needed. Below is a brief overview of services and approaches:

• Amazon Connect Dashboard (UI): An Amazon Connect interface that provides a real-time metrics dashboard, displaying key metrics such as queue status,     agent activity, and service levels. Typically intended for management who need a quick overview of real-time activity without complex, custom set-up.
• Amazon Connect Streams API: Intended for real-time interactions and customizing the agent interface. Can be used for Real-Time contact updates, notifications, and agent state management.
• AWS SDK and Amazon Connect Metrics API: The ‘GetCurrentMetricData’ API in Amazon Connect enables fetching real-time metrics programmatically. This can be used to build custom integrations, monitoring tools, or reporting solutions
• Amazon Connect Reporting and Analytics: Native dashboards that provide some real-time insights. This is the central hub within the Amazon Connect Console for viewing live metrics related to queues, agents, and routing profiles.
• Data Streaming with Amazon Kinesis: Amazon Connect can stream contact events, agent events, and other data to Amazon Kinesis Data Streams or Amazon Kinesis Firehose. From there, data can be processed, transformed, or stored in services like Amazon S3, Amazon Redshift, or Elasticsearch for further analysis. This is typically used for building advanced real-time dashboards.

Determining which services are used for real-time monitoring depends on a variety of factors, like the size of the contact center, resource capabilities, and the perceived value-added of implementation. Nonetheless, it is important to understand and be aware of all the different offerings found within Amazon Connect and the AWS suite.

Challenges of Manual Queue Management

Queue management is a vital practice for contact centers, as effective management can improve the experience for Supervisors, Agents, and their customers. However, as important as a practice this can be, it also can be extremely time-consuming and error-prone. Below are several challenges that contact centers face without automation:

• Human error: Bottlenecks may go unnoticed until they impact customer satisfaction.
• Delays in action: Manual interventions take time, potentially worsening queue performance.
• Inefficient resource use: Overstaffing or understaffing becomes more likely without data-driven insights.
• Limited scalability: As operations grow, manually managing queues becomes a daunting and unsustainable task.
• Inconsistent decision-making: Without standardized processes, decisions on agent allocation or queue adjustments may vary across supervisors, leading to inconsistent outcomes.
• Delayed identification of performance issues: Performance problems, such as agents spending excessive time in after-call work, may go unnoticed without automated monitoring and alerts.

Automating Queue Management

The practice of automating queue management can vary across call centers, but it all begins with a deep understanding of the call center operations and its available data. In this section, I will cover the high-level architecture of a solution that monitors real-time queue data and makes queue management decisions based on pre-defined rules and thresholds.

The solution contains the following services:

• Lambda: Queries real-time queue metric data through the ‘GetCurrentMetricAPI’, resource configuration data, and processes the data to make queue management decisions. These decisions include the opening & closing of specified queues and the synchronization of Operating Hours.
• EventBridge: A schedule that is used to run the Lambda at specific intervals. Set with a cron expression that is easily adjusted
• SNS: A topic was created to deliver email updates to supervisors. These notifications are intended to update subscribers of any action taken by the Lambda, along with notification of errors or invalid configurations. This ensures that supervisors remain updated on critical changes without manual intervention
• Amazon Connect Hours of Operation: Contains a set of tags, which serves as the thresholds and rules that the Lambda processes data. This gives supervisors the ability to configure the rules for the tool, without needing additional AWS access or a custom UI.

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Key Benefits

The outlined solution provides several benefits to a contact center operation:

• Proactive Queue Management
• Reduced Supervisor Workload
• Improved Resource Allocation
• Increases Scalability
• Standardization and Accuracy
• Real-Time Notifications and Transparency
• Self-Service Configuration

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Conclusion

Real-time queue monitoring and automation are transformative practices for modern contact centers. By leveraging tools within the AWS suite, businesses can overcome the challenges of manual queue management and achieve unprecedented levels of efficiency. These solutions not only empower supervisors and agents but also enhance the customer experience through proactive and data-driven management.

Whether your contact center is small or scaling rapidly, real-time insights and automated workflows provide a solid foundation for success.

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~Steven