Amazon Connect and Lex Bot Integration

Prerequisite:

Amazon Connect allows companies to provide superior customized customer service across voice, chat, and tasks at a lower cost than the traditional contact center systems.

VoiceWorx allows organizations to design and customize their own chat bots and voice assistants for their business purposes that range from monitoring, regulating services to customer service/ support and many more. These assistants can also be deployed over Amazon Connect. For that, user needs to have followed following prerequisites:

1. Create Instance of Amazon Connect

2. Create Custom App in VoiceWorx

3. Publish Custom App to Amazon Lex as Lex Bot

Create New Instance of Amazon Connect

1. If you are new to Amazon Connect, you can start by creating a Free Tier Amazon Web Services account.

2. Create a new instance of Amazon Connect and obtain a phone number using this official documentation from Amazon. Depending upon your location and the location of your target customers, you might need to perform some additional work here. Help from technical department might be required depending upon the scenario.

3. After creating the instance, Amazon Connect Home will look like this:

Before you proceed from here, please make sure that these prerequisites have been fulfilled.

1. Create Custom App in VoiceWorx and publish as Lex Bot

Configure Contact Flow and Lex Bot

1. Click on the Amazon Connect Instance. ‘contactfinder’ in the figure shown in Step 3.

2. After the Lex Bot has been published and tested. Now let’s add the Bot for Amazon Connect. If you miss this step, the Lex Bot we created in Step 3(a) won’t be available for use in Amazon Connect.

3. Under the Amazon Lex section on the right select Region>>Bot>>Add Lex Bot.

Note: If you do not see the Lex Bot you created, make sure the bot is published in the first place and Amazon Connect Instance and the Bot are both in the same region.

1. Click Add Lex Bot, verify that the bot is displayed under the section Lex Bots.

1. Now, to configure contact flow, let’s log in to the Amazon Connect Instance.

2. Click on the Access URL for the Amazon Connect Instance.

1. If you are having trouble signing in, you can take an alternative approach to Login to Amazon Connect Instance. Click on the Instance Alias name ‘contactfinder’ in above figure. You will be redirected to following page.

On the Overview menu, you can find a link for emergency access, you can click on that and proceed for training and emergency purposes.

The Amazon Connect Dashboard looks something like this:

Create New Amazon Connect Contact Flow

1. Navigate to Routing>Contact flows. Create a new Contact flow and name Contact Finder. The Contact flow is basically a call flow chart that callers go through once they dial into the call center.

1. In this documentation, a simple prompt block greet is used: “Thank you for contacting Contact Finder”. To add, drag the play prompt which is located under Interaction Section in the left navigation and drop it in the designer.

2. Connect the entry point block with the play prompt block as shown in diagram below.

1. To configure this play prompt, click and enter following information:

Enter Text: “Thank you for contacting Contact Finder. How can I help you?”

Click: Save

1. Following the prompt block, add a new Get Customer Input. This allows the customer’s input either via DTMF or using Lex bots. In this case Lex bots are used.

Click:Get Customer Input header

Enter text: “How can I help you?”

Select: Amazon Lex

Lex bot Name: ContactFinder (with appropriate region)

1. Click: Customer Input and s

Scroll to the section named: Intents.

Add: Intent that handles exit intent named QuitIntent. (Make sure to have the same intent defined in your Lex bot too).

1. In designer, add a play prompt for error handling, and another play prompt for handling exit intent.

1. For the error handling prompt, add text to speech: “Something went wrong, please try again later”.

1. For the play prompt for Exit Intent, enter text: “Thank you for using Contact Finder. GoodBye”!

1. Add arrows connecting the blocks as shown in diagram.

1. Click publish to test the intent.

1. Click the phone numbers on the left navigation as shown to claim a phone number.

1. Claim Phone Number as shown below.

1. After claiming the phone number, dial the number and test to ensure success.

Congratulations! You have successfully completed Amazon Connect and Lex Bot Integration. Likewise, you can repeat the same process with other Lex Bots using VoiceWorx and Amazon Connect Integrations.