Servicing Chats in Symbee Connect

Symbee Connect fully supports using chat based channels for customer servicing in your contact center. Most of the chat features are implemented in a common manner across all chat channels, allowing your agents to service chats in the same way, regardless of the channel the chat comes through. Features such as Work Codes, Idle Timers and Auto Text (pre-canned text response libraries for agent efficiency) are implemented generically across all chat channel types.

Chat Channel Types

Within Symbee Connect you can service chat conversations through the following methods:

• Webchat

• Amazon Pinpoint SMS

• Rest-based SMS Providers, such as Twilio.

• SMPP SMS Providers

• Social Messaging, such as WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, Twitter DM, LINE, Viber, and many others.

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Selecting the Chat Delivery Provider

Back in 2018 when Symbee Connect first implemented all the chat channels, there was no option to bring chat conversations directly through Amazon Connect. Therefore Symbee Connect has its own complete chat conversation delivery method. This is referred to within the product as the Symbee Delivery Provider.

In late 2019, Amazon Connect released the support of bringing chat conversations through Amazon Connect Contact Flows and therefore full integration with Amazon Lex chat bots and delivering chat conversations to agents via Amazon Connect Routing Profiles. This is referred to within Symbee Connect as the Amazon Delivery Provider.

Therefore, all chat channels within Symbee Connect support the selection of which Delivery Provider to use - chat delivery through either Amazon Connect (Amazon) or delivery through Symbee Connect. There are pros and cons of each. The Delivery Provider on any chat configuration can be changed between the two methods after initial channel setup. The overall agent and customer end-user experience is the same regardless of which Delivery Provider option is being used. Chat conversations still look and behave the same to the agent with all the normal features available and for example the Symbee Connect Webchat front end looks the same to the customer regardless of the delivery provider.

Selecting Delivery Provider: Symbee Connect

Using Symbee Connect as the delivery provider has the following characteristics:

• A quick simple setup to immediately start receiving and handling chats. Simply configure a Symbee Connect Skill Queue, select the Skill Queue within the Symbee Connect chat configuration and assign the Skill Queue to the required agents in Symbee Connect to start handling chat conversations.
• There is no extra charge for Symbee Connect delivered chat conversations.
• Supports multiple concurrent chats of any type and full blending of chats with other types of work.
• Supports concurrency between chats and voice calls delivered through Amazon Connect. For example, you can configure an agent to not receive voice calls while on a chat (No Mixing), or be able to receive a voice call while on a chat (Amazon over Symbee Connect), or to receive a chat while on a voice call (Full Mixing).
• Does not support integration with Amazon Lex bots or Lambda invocations. Incoming chats are queued and delivered directly to agents.

Selecting Delivery Provider: Amazon

Using Amazon Chat as the delivery provider has the following characteristics:

• Create Contact Flows within Amazon Connect to initially receive and handle your incoming chat conversations. Configure which Contact Flow receives each type of chat within the Symbee Connect chat endpoint configuration.
• Supports full integration with Amazon Lex bots and Lambda invocations via the Amazon Connect Contact Flows.
• Configure which agents are delivered chats through your Amazon Connect Routing Profiles.
• Supports multiple concurrent chats of any type.
• You cannot blend chat conversations with voice calls or Amazon Connect Tasks. Once on a chat conversation, an agent will only receive chats until no more chats are available in queue before switching back to voice and vice versa.
• Standard published Amazon Connect Chat usage pricing applies. Chats are charged per message.

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Chat Automatic Language Translation

When servicing chats as an agent using the Symbee Connect User/Agent UI, automatic language translation between the customer and the agent is an optional out-the-box feature of Symbee Connect. Initially, automatic language translation is only available for Webchat type chat conversations, but is being expanded to be available when servicing any chat channel type (Pinpoint, SMS, Social, etc.).

Automatic Language Translation in Symbee Connect is supported on both Delivery methods (Symbee Delivery Provider or Amazon Delivery Provider), and is supported on Webchat conversations that use either the Symbee Connect customizable customer-facing WebChat front-end, or your own custom-built customer-facing chat front end (for example: Amazon Chat with a custom frontend built using amazon-connect-chatjs).

Chat Auto Translation - How it works

Allow your contact center agents to seamlessly service chat conversations in any of the languages supported by Amazon Translate and Amazon Comprehend (currently 70+ languages - refer here: Amazon Translate - Supported languages and language codes).

When Auto Translation is enabled, each message in the chat conversation (both directions - customer to agent, and agent to customer) is analyzed to determine the source language it is written in, and then the target language the message needs to be upon receipt.

• For inbound messages (from customer into agent), the target language is determined using the agent's Chat Preferred Translation Language, which is a setting on each agent's Symbee Connect User profile (see here). Any inbound chat messages from the customer to the agent will be translated (if the source and target language differ) into the agent's preferred language before being displayed to the agent (the original pre-translated text is also available to the agent if needed - see further below).
• The source language for each inbound message from the customer is also determined, and becomes the target language for any responses sent from the agent back to the customer. The target language is continuously determined throughout the conversation based on the last message received from the customer.
• For outbound messages (from agent out to the customer), the target customer's language (per above, taken from the last inbound message from the customer) is determined, and the message typed by the agent is translated (if the source and target language differ) to the customer's target language before being sent.

The resulting transcript for a chat conversation with Auto Translation enabled is always (intentionally) preserved to contain the actual messages typed by the customer (in the customers language), and the actual messages presented back to the customer (in the customers language, which may have been the result of a translation).

From the agent's perspective, if any messages (either received or sent) have been automatically translated, each chat bubble containing a translation is additionally marked with a "t" in the agent UI to indicate the message has been translated. The agent can optionally click the "t" to toggle between viewing the original text and translated text if needed.

When a chat conversation (with Auto Translation enabled) is transferred from one agent to another, the chat history presented to the receiving agent is always translated into the receiving agent's Preferred Translation Language (based on agent/user settings - see above), regardless of the preferred language of the previous agent. Any language change between agents should be transparent to the customer - the customer is always presented the conversation in the customers preferred / last-typed language.

Enabling Chat Auto Translation

Fundamentally, Symbee Connect Chat Auto Translation is controlled by five settings:

1. Translate Enabled. A boolean attribute on each chat conversation, named sc_translate_enabled. A value of "true" enables auto translation.
2. Brevity. A string attribute on each chat conversation, named sc_brevity. Valid values are: OFF, and ON. The default value is OFF if not set. Refer to Amazon Translate - Brevity.
3. Formality. A string attribute on each chat conversation, named sc_formality. Valid values are: OFF, FORMAL and INFORMAL. The default value is OFF if not set. Refer to Amazon Translate - Formality.
4. Profanity. A string attribute on each chat conversation, named sc_profanity. Valid values are: OFF, and MASK. The default value is OFF if not set. Refer to Amazon Translate - Profanity.
5. The agent's Chat Preferred Translation Language. A setting on each individual agent's Symbee Connect User profile, which can be personally set by each agent in the Settings Tool of the Symbee Connect User/Agent UI. The default value is "en" (English).

Regardless of the Chat Delivery Provider, or what customer-facing front end is being used, setting 5 above is always controlled/set by the agent in the Symbee Connect User/Agent UI.

For settings 1 to 4 above:

• For Symbee Delivered webchats, where the Symbee Connect customizable customer-facing WebChat front-end is being used, auto translation is enabled using the Auto Translation settings on the WebChat Endpoint screen for each configured Webchat Endpoint in the Symbee Connect Administration Portal. See here for details.
• For Amazon Delivered webchats, where the Symbee Connect customer-facing WebChat front-end is being used - same as above, auto translation is enabled using the Auto Translation settings on the WebChat Endpoint screen for each configured Webchat Endpoint in the Symbee Connect Administration Portal. The settings configured in the Administration Portal screen automatically set and populate the required Amazon Connect Contact Attributes on each Chat Contact when it gets initiated. See here for details.
• For Amazon Delivered webchats, where something other than the Symbee Connect customer-facing WebChat front-end is being used (for example: Amazon Chat with a custom frontend built using amazon-connect-chatjs):
  • Set the above four settings (sc_translate_enabled, sc_brevity, sc_formality, and sc_profanity) as Amazon Connect Contact Attributes using the Set Contact Attributes block in the Amazon Connect Contact Flow editor
  • The above Contact Attributes can be set at any time prior to the chat contact being transferred to queue for delivery to the agent in the contact flow.
  • The only mandatory attribute required to be set is sc_translate_enabled with a value of true. Brevity, Formality and Profanity settings will be defaulted if the sc_brevity, sc_formality and sc_profanity attributes are not explicitly populated.