Accelerate your Amazon Connect deployment with Poly headsets and devices

Contact centers globally are amid a seismic shift where their organizations increasingly are coming under pressure as they must adapt to new realities driven by data security, customer preferences and less time to test, plan and execute new IT projects – all the while having to ensure customer satisfaction and experience scores remain high.

Upgrading an existing on-premise contact center requires the ability to replicate cloud business benefits in your own data center or private cloud. The requirement for compute capacity and ability to ideate, develop, test, and roll out features rapidly has become a competitive differentiator, if not a necessity. The emergence of born in the cloud contact center vendors like Amazon Web Services means any competitor, whether big or small, will have access to a full set of features and capabilities which previously were reserved for large enterprises who had the financial ability to build and host large on-premise data and telephony infrastructure centers.

Poly is thrilled to announce the arrival of the Poly-integrated Amazon Connect Contact Control Panel (CCP), an industry first Quick Start for headsets with Amazon Connect.

The Quick Start is accessible on the AWS Quick Start landing page and was developed by Poly in collaboration with AWS so that our customers can accelerate their Amazon Connect deployment and ensure a uniform user experience with Poly headsets and USB adaptors from the get-go.

Contact center agents, supervisors and managers can expect a new and improved user experience with the Poly-integrated Amazon Connect Contact Control Panel such as:

• Call answer/end, volume adjustment seamlessly synchronized between Poly headsets and agent’s PC
• Quick disconnect/mute recognition, including removal of user from queue and automatic change of status
• New and improved appearance of CCP with Poly animated Branding
• Data flow through to Plantronics Manager Pro SaaS service
• Identification of Poly headset/device connected to Amazon Connect

IT departments and managers also benefit from the new Poly-integrated Amazon CCP Quick Start as it reduces and simplifies hundreds of manual procedures into a few simple steps that help accelerate and automate your Amazon Connect deployment.

Some of the key Poly benefits for IT departments are:

• AWS Solution Architect reviewed and approved Quick Start which is an automated reference deployment using AWS CloudFormation templates to roll out key technologies following AWS best practice.
• Poly Quick Start Reference Deployment Guide
• Uniform user experience irrespective of Poly headset deployed
• Platform for standardization of headsets and devices
• Global footprint with best in class support and warranty
• Migrate legacy headset assets, track and manage these with Plantronics Manager Pro optional SaaS service (runs on AWS)
  • Access to telemetry data from each headset and agent
  • Track and manage daily noise exposure levels and investigate acoustic incidents

We are also excited to announce a brand new set of APIs for Amazon Connect for developers which is live on the Poly developer site. The sample code and APIs can be leveraged by our partners to develop headset integrations for Amazon Connect based solutions.

Amazon Connect is an easy to use omnichannel cloud contact center that helps companies provide superior customer service at a lower cost. It was originally built to give Amazon’s retail business personal, dynamic, and natural experiences for its customers. It provides a seamless experience across voice and chat for customers and agents. This includes a single set of tools for skills-based routing, powerful real-time and historical analytics, and easy-to-use intuitive management tools – all with pay-as-you-go pricing.

Poly is a global communications company that powers meaningful human connection and collaboration. Poly combines legendary audio expertise and powerful video and conferencing capabilities to overcome the distractions, complexity and distance that make communication in and out of the workplace challenging.

The Contact Center industry is undergoing a tectonic shift which was very clear earlier this year at Enterprise Connect 2019 in Orlando. The shift to cloud is upending the dominance of hitherto vendor market share and technological roadmaps.

Cloud CAGR will be estimated at 25% p.a. through 2024 and already next year it is expected that the Cloud Contact Center market will exceed the comparable premise one. This shift also points towards a wider array of choices for companies as they look to leverage the scale and agility of Cloud platforms.

Poly, which means “many,” leverages the legendary audio and video expertise of Plantronics and Polycom and its breadth of smart endpoints that connect across and between unified communications platforms to reduce the distractions, complexity, and distance in the modern workspace. Poly aims to be the solution of choice whenever and wherever collaboration clouds reach people.

The power of many is also at the heart of the transformation in the contact center space as customer engagements multiply exponentially across all interaction channels. The goal will be to elevate channel satisfaction across all channels to the level of the live agent voice channel. As we get better at deploying AI and in blending the customer journey into a true omnichannel experience the volume of interactions that make it through to the live agent voice channel are more likely to both be longer and highly complex.

Poly is a Gold Sponsor at the Genesys Xperience 19 show in Denver, Co. June 10 -13, 2019 and will be showcasing the breadth of our portfolio ranging from Open SIP IP endpoints, to our industry benchmark headsets and our innovative Cloud management portfolio which encompasses both IP Phone and Headset management tools.

Remote work and noise mitigation

The brand promise inherent in the social contract between a company and their customers will inherently be put on the spot every day and in every single transaction whether it is in a physical store, online or waiting to speak to a customer representative.

User experience is an evermore important topic in the contact center in the sense that we need it to encompass the work environment, the workflow on the desktop and within the cubicle or workspace. A large percentage of our customers are also looking at adding more remote workers to their customer interaction channels and with that a new approach to user experience is required.

Noise mitigation is a key concern when discussing user experience and the correlation to customer experience is clear here. Exposure to noise leads to lower productivity, stress, physical ailments  such as headaches etc. leading to unplanned work absences wreaking havoc on our capacity planning. Poly offers a comprehensive approach to noise mitigation from soundscaping to active noise cancelling technology and comprehensive born in the cloud management platforms.

Poly recently announced a new Genesys PureCloud integration and compatibility across our Encore Pro and Savi headsets and USB adapter portfolio as with PureEngage. Our extensive line of VVX IP phones are likewise supported across PureEngage, PureConnect and PureCloud. Genesys and Poly customers can now deploy an industry leading voice architecture around Poly headsets, VVX IP phones and software which works seamlessly with Genesys solutions while offering a best in class headset experience on the phone and the desktop.

For more information please visit our store front on the Genesys AppFoundry where you can learn more about our devices and Manager Pro and poly.com Poly will likewise be available at Xperience19 to facilitate these discussions and demonstrate our solutions at booth G07.

This week it seems that the whole world is congregating in Las Vegas at Amazon Web Services re:Invent 2017. One area of special interest to Plantronics at re:Invent is Amazon Connect.

Amazon Connect, which was released earlier this year, is a cloud-based contact center solution that is based on Amazons own internal contact center technology. Since the launch, Plantronics have been actively listening to and garnering feedback on how we can assist our customers develop the best user experience for their CSR’s with this platform. Based on this feedback we are glad to announce that we are providing sample code to integrate Plantronics headsets with Amazon Connect, demonstrating the open nature of our software.

The sample code and a full list of requirements are available on GitHub allowing developers and system integrators to improve the CSR experience when using a Plantronics Headsets by providing remote call control direct from the headset.

The sample code provided shows one way that Amazon Connect CCP (Contact Control Panel), Amazon Connect Streams API and the Plantronics Hub client-side REST API can be integrated to provide headset remote call control (RCC).

This integration via the Plantronics Hub client-side REST API, furthermore means that customers can connect their Plantronics Hub clients to a Plantronics Manager Protenant. This would enable them to provide the end user’s IT admin with bulk management and insights reporting functionality.

The sample code also shows developers how to include more accurate agent availability status, based on the physical connection of the headset to the supported DA70/DA80/DA90 USB adapter.

Have a great re:Invent 2017

Peter