Samsung Taps AWS for CCaaS, Cites Pricing Clarity as a Core Contract Winner

The South Korean tech juggernaut believes that pay as you go will provide greater flexibility at a more competitive price

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Published: July 2, 2024

Rhys Fisher

Samsung has decided to switch up its contact center provider and implement the Amazon Connect platform.

The South Korean tech powerhouse decided to make the change after experiencing issues with its previous hybrid contact center solution. That included incomplete reports, missing metadata, limited AI options for voice, and an inflexible routing platform.

So, Samsung wishes to move further into the cloud and take advantage of new features and the fast pace of CCaaS innovation.

Moreover, for Reuben Lowenstein, Customer Care Manager at Samsung Electronics, the collaboration with AWS is part of the company’s ethos of being always open to new ideas and change. He said:

You want to be ready for whatever comes your way. You have no idea what will be invented in an attic room somewhere in a few weeks.

Working with prominent BPO Teleperformance, Samsung selected AWS due, in part, to its flexible pricing model.

As part of the selection process, Samsung explored three possible CCaaS providers. However, it was unimpressed by some of the vendors’ traditional pricing models due to the lack of transparency on the link between delivered functionality and costs.

That’s tricky for CCaaS platform providers to deliver, with the likes of Genesys and – more recently – NICE revealing new pricing plans.

In doing so, these vendors are rethinking how they bundle their CCaaS offerings so contact centers can try new AI tools without tying them to agent seats.

That’s critical, as those seats will not drive the volume of contact center workflows in the future.

In the case of AWS, however, its pricing plan has always received warm reviews from analysts. For instance, the 2023 Gartner Magic Quadrant for CCaaS stated:

Amazon Connect’s consumption-based pricing approach is the most agile in the CCaaS market. It enables organizations to experiment with voice, chat, and self-service at a low cost without long-term commitments, and clients don’t have to pay for unused capability or seats.

Lowenstein echoed these words when discussing the key factors that led to the company opting for the Teleperformance-certified Amazon Connect platform. He explained:

AWS is not a ‘telephony company’, it is an AI company with a modular platform where you purchase what you need and pay for what you use.

“That’s the first time I’ve encountered that because, with most cloud solutions, the number of licenses you purchase is based on peak usage.”

So, let’s examine closely how AWS’ pricing model works and the pros and cons of a pay-as-you-go system.

Pay As You Go Cloud Solutions

To borrow a phrase from everyone’s favorite wood varnish provider, AWS’s pay-as-you-go pricing model does exactly what it says on the tin.

Traditionally, most CCaaS vendors operate under a yearly price plan based on metrics such as the number of users and consumption, but AWS customers only pay for what they use.

The benefit of this is greater flexibility, as companies are not tied down to any long-term commitments. However, there are also risks involved.

The most notable danger of pay-as-you-go CCaaS pricing is its unpredictability, which could lead to unexpected bill spikes.

This issue is known as ‘cloud bill shock,’ and while Lowenstein does acknowledge that it is an area of concern, he believes that Samsung has done the necessary due diligence to prevent it from being a serious issue:

We have estimated our data consumption in advance. We have been testing for a while now and have a good idea of the data flows. The extremes mainly occur if you start using data-intensive processes such as Lens (an architecture tool, ed.) or Lambda (for running serverless applications, ed.).

Cloud bill shock was also discussed by Marco Brouwer, a Contact Center Manager at Teleperformance, who agreed with Lowenstein that the pros definitely outweighed the cons:

“We have a good insight into data flows, so we know what to expect. And if your costs increase, there is always something that precedes it. Samsung scales up around the holiday period and when a new device is launched.

Normally, Samsung would have to pay for the largest number of simultaneous users, the peak load, throughout the year. That is no longer an issue. We have calculated that paying as you use is cheaper.

More Amazon Connect News

Last week, AWS announced improvements to the step-by-step guide feature for its agent copilot.

The update to Amazon Q, available for users of the Connect CCaaS platform, will allow the assistant to offer real-time recommendations for step-by-step guides based on specific customer queries.

By analyzing live interactions, it identifies the customer’s intent and provides the relevant guide to the agent, aiming to reduce handling times, improve first-contact resolution rates, and enhance customer satisfaction.

Michael Wallace, Solutions Architecture Leader for Customer Experience at AWS, described the new enhancement as a win-win for both customers and agents:

The first call resolution is the holy grail in the contact center. Legacy tools require call center agents to click through multiple applications on multiple screens before they can address a customer’s issue, increasing the potential for mistakes.

For more on this story, check out our article: Amazon Connect Boosted by Step-by-Step Guide Enhancement

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