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.

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 with 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.